Acting Secretary of the Navy Announces Portfolio Acquisition Executives

The nature of warfare is changing at lightning speed. To maintain our edge, the Navy-Marine Corps must deliver advanced ships, aircrafts, and combat systems to the warfighter faster than ever before. Let's start with the obvious. Pentagon business practices simply weren't cutting it. We were buying and building things in a compliance-based bureaucracy. We had lost our way. More concerned with checking boxes and following rigid processes than the only thing that matters, getting a working system into the hands of a sailor or marine when they need it. Under our old system, a Program Executive Officer, PEO, was in charge of building a ship or an aircraft. But there was a catch. They didn't actually control the people writing the contracts, the engineers testing the systems, the maintenance mechanics, or the tech warrant holders. Authority was fractured. If a problem popped up, the PEO couldn't just fix it. They had to ask other departments for permission, losing months or years in the process. That is why we eliminated the PEO-Syscom divide and established Portfolio Acquisition Executives, or PAEs. A PAE is a Single Accountable Mission Boss. Instead of having to ask other departments for help, the PAE owns the entire team and the entire problems from cradle to grave. The contract writers, the engineers, the sustainment crews, and even the tech warrant holders. They all work directly for the PAE. If there's a roadblock, the PAE doesn't need a committee. They have absolute authority to make the decision on the spot. By eliminating non-value-added layers of bureaucracy, we are saving the taxpayer millions. Furthermore, each PAE has a rapid capability sale. Instead of spending billions and waiting a decade to invent a new technology from scratch, PAEs are empowered to buy commercial technology off the shelf, adapt it, and field it immediately. We're done analyzing the problem. Change happens now, and the PAE model ensures we deliver a larger, more lethal fleet to the warfighter at a lower cost ahead of the threat.