Defense Industry Must Pump Out Weapons Faster, Pentagon Says

It is no secret that the Pentagon wants the defense industrial base to turn out weapons and munitions faster. Now, the five-sided building wants the defense industry to develop plans to do that. It’s a good idea to have the companies charged with achieving faster weapons fielding develop a way to make that happen. It’s clear that when the Department of War has attempted to meet warfighter needs more quickly, the programs have met with limited success.

Improving National Defense Industry Base a Priority

The Trump administration has made improving the US defense industrial base a national priority and is asking the companies that design, develop, manufacture, and field the most capable weapons in history to provide recommendations on how to do so faster. Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg appealed to defense industry leaders, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Anduril, and RTX Corporation, to expedite acquisition programs. According to The Washington Post: 

“Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote to industry leaders on Wednesday [Aug. 5], saying they had no more than 21 days to submit plans to ‘drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,’ according to the memo … 'Years-long development cycles are not acceptable,’ Feinberg wrote. ‘We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now.’”

This initiative is consistent with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14265, released April 9, 2025, titled “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base.” The executive order put in place US policy to accelerate defense procurement and revive the capability to meet warfighter needs rapidly. The executive order emphasized the importance of the US defense industrial base, stating that Trump is “committed to ensuring that the United States military possesses the most lethal warfighting capabilities in the world.”

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Though the notion that the United States is running critically low on munitions is disputed by the White House, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) claims otherwise: “The United States has used about half of the initial inventory for three of these munitions (Patriot, THAAD, and PrSM) and about one-third of the initial inventory for the rest (JASSM, SM-2/3/6, and Tomahawk). Even so, enough remains for any plausible scenario in the war against Iran.” But does the United States have the ability to sustain and win future conflicts, such as with China, Russia, or North Korea? Clearly, such a question lends a growing sense of urgency to the creation of a defense industrial base capable of meeting the challenge. 

Acquisition System Reform Ideas Are Nothing New

Defense acquisition reform proposals are nothing new. In fact, throughout history, generating schemes to improve speed and reliability has become a boutique industry. Most recently, Ajay Patel and J. David Patterson (this author) coauthored “Faster Than Our Enemies: How TAIV™ [Time as an Independent Variable] Can Transform Pentagon Procurement,” a framework concept for meeting warfighter requirements when needed, not years in the future. As we explain, “In a TAIV™-driven program, the delivery date is not a milestone that can be negotiated away during execution; it is a defining parameter around which all other program elements must be designed and managed.”

Furthermore, applying TAIV™ enables early trade-offs, limits program scope creep, and prioritizes operational readiness. The proposal is by no means a panacea for what ails the defense acquisition system. It is, however, the kind of idea that could emerge from the deputy secretary’s proposal.

What Feinberg is driving toward makes sense. Why not ask the industry, challenged with meeting warfighter needs, how to do that in the most efficient manner possible? The Feinberg memo is an operational demand message that allows the defense industry to offer practical, executable plans for the timely procurement of weapons and services to keep pace with global national security threats. 

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The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.