Transforming Navy Acquisition: How We Maintain Our Competitive Edge

To the acquisition professionals of our Navy and Marine Corps team, hello. My name is William Mahan. Acting Secretary Cao appointed me to perform the duties of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition. It is my honor to serve. More importantly, it is a profound responsibility, one that I now share with you. President Trump has given us a clear mission, to restore peace through strength by rebuilding our military. To that end, Secretary Hegseth has called the Acquisition Enterprise to recognize our profession for what it truly is, a core warfighting capability. Because as he said, we will determine whether we win our next war. Either we deliver or we fail. It's literally life or death. Let those words sink in. Understand the gravity of this moment. Now this work is not for everyone. I understand that, and that's okay. But for those willing to step up, know this. I stand right beside you. In the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, our place is in the arena, dedicated to this worthy cause. Soon, I will provide more details on our strategy, but let's begin with this. Cetus possum, Parabellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. This ancient Roman adage is as true today as it was 2,000 years ago. And so, we will prepare. As Secretary Cowell's direction, RD&A will immediately implement our top three priorities. First, we will rebuild our Navy and Marine Corps for 21st century warfare. We will deliver the Golden Fleet. We will fix our broken shipbuilding programs, accelerate ship and munitions delivery schedules, and compress maintenance timelines. At the same time, we will develop and field the Fleet of the Future with the manned and platforms and advanced capabilities we need to win tomorrow's high-end fight. By rapidly integrating new technologies into our forces, we will ensure our Sailors and Marines maintain the technological supremacy we need to deter, and if necessary, to defeat our potential adversaries. Second, we will revitalize our industrial base. I'm not talking about fattening up a shrinking number of contractors. I'm talking about competition, innovation, and resiliency. We will attract private capital to compete for the capabilities and the capacity we need. We will out-innovate, out-iterate, and out-scale our potential adversaries. This is how we move our maritime and munitions industrial base to a wartime footing. It should not take eight years to build a ship or three years to build a missile, and soon it won't. Finally, we will fundamentally transform the Navy acquisition system. I'm talking about the government. We cannot deliver on our first two priorities without changing the way we do business. This starts with leadership. We will not simply promote the next most senior available candidate. Instead, we will identify and promote the next generation of acquisition and engineering pioneers like Hyman Rickover, Wayne Meyer, and Red Rayburn. These great leaders were not In fact, they were renegades, but they understood how new technologies could transform the battlefield, and they stopped at nothing to ensure our warfighters had them, and so will we. We will abandon the D.C. crystal palaces and the labyrinth of bureaucratic paper pushers. We will roll up our sleeves and return to the waterfront. We will organize for success around smaller teams, and we will implement lasting reforms. Achieving President Trump's mission will not be easy, but we are in this together. You, my fellow acquisition teammates, must act as though the fate of the free world depends on you, because it does. Now let's get to work.