2025 didn’t fix defense acquisition, but it certainly changed the direction.
2025 is the year everything changed for me. I got married. I became a parent. And
somewhere in between learning how to function on very little sleep and recalibrating what
really matters, I watched the defense acquisition system start to change in ways I honestly
wasn’t sure I would ever see.
Those major personal milestones have a way of sharpening perspective. For me, I stopped
tolerating vague timelines. I stopped accepting “eventually” as an answer. I care a lot more
now about whether systems actually work, whether decisions get made on time, and
whether outcomes match intent. That lens has significantly shaped how I’ve watched
acquisition reform unfold this year.
Anyone who has spent real time in defense acquisition knows the problems I’m about to
discuss. The system has been slow, fragmented, and ineffective for a long time.
Requirements haven’t kept pace with the threat. Programs have been built in isolation and
magically expected to interoperate later. Integration has dragged on for years, all while
costs balloon and schedules slip. Good technology continuously dies in the valley of death
because funding decisions and procurement timelines never quite align. Meanwhile,
warfighters and allies wait WAY too long for capabilities we already know how to deliver.
None of this has been hidden or done in the shadows. These issues became an embedded
part of the acquisition culture. We have collectively lived with them, complained about
them, and learned how to work with and around them. But in my opinion, 2025 felt
different. Not because the problems changed, but because the response to them finally
seems to have.
In 2025, the Department of War (DoW) and national security leadership seemed to stop
pretending that the old system could be patched, tuned, or optimized. They started taking it
apart and dismantling the old infrastructure. That alone is why this acquisition reform effort
feels fundamentally different from the ones we’ve seen before.
The National Defense Strategy (NDS) made that message clear. The current (old)
acquisition system simply can’t deliver what the strategy demands. Congress and the
administration followed up with a slate of reforms throughout 2025 and solidified them in
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2026. The EOs, directives, and
legislation issued in 2025 explicitly support portfolio management, requirements reform,
engineering integration, and new funding mechanisms. These efforts seem to be a real
departure from the incremental tweaks to legacy processes we’ve all grown used to.
Take, for example, the shift from Program Executive Offices (PEOs) to Portfolio Acquisition
Executives (PAEs). Anyone who has worked in or around a PEO understands how
entrenched that model has become. It has delivered results, but they’re usually siloed and
not widely replicated. The new portfolio model for PAEs pushes leaders to consider
integrated mission outcomes rather than protecting individual programs. With the PAE
model, design, integration, engineering, and funding are tied to the mission rather than to
the org chart. In an ecosystem where org charts seem to change constantly, this is a long
needed, structural shift that should have happened years ago. Now the 2026 NDAA
formally locks it in.
The same is true for requirements reform. The Joint Capabilities Integration and
Development System (JCIDS) has been a bottleneck for as long as most contractors can
remember. It was built in (and for) a different era, and it has slowed decision-making for
decades. The 2026 NDAA officially removes it as the governing construct and replaces it
with mechanisms that are focused on identifying Key Operational Problems (KOPs). Those
problems will be ranked and pushed into funded action through the Requirements and
Resourcing Alignment Board (RRAB). This is the first time that senior leaders will have a
formal way to say, “These are the problems that matter, and this is where the money needs
to go.” That alignment has been missing for a long time.
The Joint Acceleration Reserve (JAR) is another practical step forward to addressing one of
the biggest acquisition challenges faced by small companies with innovative solutions –
The valley of death. The valley of death didn’t come about by accident. In fact, it’s been a
predictable outcome of the budget process for a long time. Until now, there hasn’t been a
mechanism to fund solutions as soon as they’re ready to be fielded. The JAR is meant to
change that dynamic and give the Department a way to move when capability is actually
available.
The Mission Engineering Integration Activity (MEIA) tackles another long-standing issue.
Integration has too often been treated as a cleanup effort at the end of procurement and
production. The MEIA should push shared engineering foundations, common data models,
and earlier industry engagement to the front, where integration belongs. This is the fix that
years of “we’ll integrate it later” policies never delivered on.
One of the most significant changes we saw in 2025 was the administration’s undertaking
of the “legendary” Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Overhaul. For decades, the FAR has
grown through constant accumulation. More clauses, more exceptions, more compliance
layered on top of compliance. Everyone inside the system felt the drag, even if they
disagreed on how to fix it. In 2025, the decision to address the problems with the FAR truly
signaled something important: that this acquisition reform isn’t about adding another
workaround or pilot. It’s about simplifying how the government buys, removing
requirements that no longer serve a clear purpose, and giving contracting officers more
room to exercise judgment rather than defaulting to box-checking. The overhaul is still
underway and FAR from finished, but it’s a critical complement to portfolio management
and requirements reform. If the broader reforms are about what the government buys and
why, the FAR overhaul is about how it actually happens day-to-day.
Even with all of that said, not everything survived the legislative processes and
negotiations.
Several proposed reforms that would have strengthened pricing transparency and oversight
were stripped from the final 2026 NDAA. Early House and Senate versions included
provisions to limit outdated cost and pricing data and close loopholes that allow prices to
be justified after the fact, but those didn’t make the final cut. Instead, Congress asked the
Department to study the issue and report back, a much softer outcome than many pricing
reformers hoped for.
The same thing happened with oversight of Other Transaction Authority (OTAs) agreements.
Proposed guardrails were replaced with a much more basic approach – a Government
Accountability Office (GAO) review. Supporters of flexibility argue that the Other
Transaction Authority should remain light touch. Critics of the outcome argue that the lack
of oversight invites abuse. That debate still remains unresolved.
Perhaps most surprising was the elimination of right-to-repair provisions. Even bipartisan
reforms wanted to give service members the right to repair their own equipment. However,
those inclusions were stripped after industry members pushed back. (I think we know who
wants to keep the rights to repair their own systems, at a greater cost to the government….
Looking at you, big primes!) Those provisions had broad support and still didn’t survive. It’s
hard not to see that as a reminder of how much influence traditional primes continue to
have over maintenance and sustainment.
Taken together, the omissions highlight a tension running through the 2025 reform efforts.
On one hand, the 2026 NDAA codifies real change. On the other hand, there is a distinct
avoidance of some of the most challenging fights over issues such as transparency,
oversight, and incentives. That tension leaves many people unsure about what’s going to
come. Some are wondering if we are truly entering a new era of capability delivery, while
others wonder if we’re rebranding parts of the same system and hoping for better results.
For the workforce, the message is mixed. Authority is shifting, and expectations are
increasing. Portfolio thinking and engineering discipline are clearly on the rise, but the lack
of hard constraints on cost and oversight leaves room for old habits to creep back in.
Industry is getting the same mixed signals. Companies are being told to build modular,
interoperable, exportable solutions that fit into portfolios. At the same time, many of the
old pricing and data practices remain untouched. These disconnects could slow real
competition.
There’s no question that 2025 marked the most significant acquisition reform effort in a
generation. And on a personal level, it was a year that reshaped how I think about time,
urgency, and follow-through. Both professionally and personally, this year reinforced the
same lesson for me. Real change doesn’t come from talking about it. It comes from doing
the work to drive change and continuing to confront and execute on the harder work that
follows.
For me, the reforms that passed in 2025 show what’s possible, and the ones that didn’t
show how much work really remains. What happens next will matter far more than what
was announced this year.
In 2026, I’m watching closely to see the follow-through from what was started in 2025.