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The SPEED Act would make mission acceleration—not bureaucracy—the organizing principle of U.S. defense acquisition
Editor’s note: A version of this article first ran in The National Interest.
As the world witnesses innovation on the Ukrainian battlefield and mounting threats from adversaries like China and Russia, the United States faces a critical decision: Do we continue to let bureaucracy slow the delivery of vital military capabilities, or do we fundamentally rewire our defense acquisition system for speed and mission success? The Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery Act of 2025—aptly named the SPEED Act—represents the boldest effort in a generation to answer that call.
Having led the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF) in Afghanistan and helped build innovation programs like Hacking for Defense, I’ve witnessed first-hand the promise and perils of mission acceleration. The urgent lessons from Ukraine, where soldiers iterate solutions on the frontline, and from our own history of episodic agility extinguished by institutional inertia, show why U.S. defense reform can no longer wait.
Ukraine’s armed forces, far from the polished doctrines of Western militaries, have become a worldwide case study in battlefield adaptation. Over the past four years, Ukraine has rapidly fielded new technologies—cheap drones, ground-based robots, autonomous systems—faster than traditional acquisition timelines would ever allow. Necessity, spurred by existential threat, has made Ukraine a “war lab for the future,” where outcomes, not checklists, drive innovation.
Ukrainian units now employ unmanned ground vehicles to reduce infantry risk, coordinate with developers in real time, and field solutions at the tempo of combat. The West is learning: U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Randy George recently credited Ukraine’s embrace of small, attritable drones as evidence that “integrating cutting-edge software with scalable drone technology” is not just possible—it’s essential.
Imagine if the U.S. had moved as quickly: how many lives might have been saved if we’d enabled Ukraine to stand up its own REF at the outset? The scale and speed of Ukrainian adaptation underscore a powerful truth: mission acceleration is not about technology alone, but about building and sustaining organizational habits for responsiveness.
The United States has examples of innovation at scale—the REF, the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office—but these organizations have been treated as wartime expedients, not enduring assets. After Afghanistan, the REF was dissolved, taking with it years of experience and feedback loops that had allowed soldiers to get solutions in months, not years. Time and again, institutional muscle memory favors conformity and process over effectiveness.
The Pentagon’s own diagnoses have found the same problems: overregulation, fragmented acquisition authorities, and a culture that penalizes risk-taking. Reform has been piecemeal—Other Transaction Authorities, rapid prototyping pilots—but the system stubbornly reverts to business as usual. The Defense Innovation Board and leading voices warn that the Department “does not encourage new techniques, processes or technologies,” with innovation pockets starved for authority and continuity.
Enter the SPEED Act, currently being considered as part of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. Sponsored by House Armed Services Committee leaders Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the SPEED Act proposes a systemic overhaul—not patchwork fixes.
Key Pillars:
• Operational Outcomes First: Rewrites the purpose of acquisition in law to focus on warfighter needs and outcomes, not compliance for its own sake.
• Compresses Requirements Timeline: Establishes a new directorate to cut the cycle from identifying a need to delivering a solution from years to as little as 90 days, slashing the “requirements to fielding” gap that has hobbled U.S. responses.
• Empowers Program Leaders: Program Executive Officers (PEOs) receive more authority and accountability, with increased budget flexibility to move resources rapidly where needed.
• Encourages Responsible Risk and Experimentation: Places value on iterative solutions—getting 75% there and refining in the field—rather than chasing theoretical perfection while threats evolve.
• Opens the Door to Commercial and Nontraditional Partners: Reforms accounting and contracting to enable tech firms and small businesses to work with DoD without prohibitive compliance burdens, aiming to make “battlefield-tested” innovation the norm, not the exception.
• Builds a Mission-Oriented Acquisition Workforce: Shifts incentives and culture for acquisition professionals, raising their status and encouraging a problem-solving, not process-following, mentality.
The Act’s architects highlight the need for a “common North Star” that aligns all acquisition stakeholders—military, civilian, and industry—around mission urgency. Such alignment is painfully absent in the current system, where requirements, acquisition, and budgets are siloed and often at cross-purposes. The SPEED Act, supporters argue, gives acquisition professionals not just more power but clearer mandates, making them engines of progress rather than custodians of inertia].
Mission acceleration must become part of America’s defense DNA. The Transportation Security Administration stands out as the only civilian agency to formalize an “innovation doctrine,” institutionalizing practices for rapid solution delivery—not just in crisis, but as a standard mode of operation. The U.S. military must do the same: bake urgency, feedback, and cross-functional teaming into daily business, not treat them as exceptions or privileges reserved for wartime.
This is a cultural challenge as much as a legislative one. The REF’s secret was not technology but its model—embedding engineering and science teams side-by-side with warfighters, empowering rapid problem-solving, and ensuring real-time feedback between the battlefield and Washington. Organizational memory and relationships matter; so does ongoing practice. You don’t wake up one day and suddenly have the capability to do mission acceleration. It takes a long time to build that capacity.
The value of mission acceleration extends across the government—from cyber defense to health and energy. The COVID-19 crisis, ransomware attacks, and infrastructure sabotage all demand organizational agility, not ponderous bureaucracy. The Army’s “fail fast and iterate” culture in Iraq and Afghanistan can—and must—inform how civilian agencies prepare for asymmetric shocks and disasters.
It is vital for senior leaders to champion and codify these principles. Doctrine without leadership breeds process for its own sake. Leadership without doctrine invites atrophy at the first sign of “normalcy.”
Cultural change will not happen overnight. The SPEED Act acknowledges this, setting up incentives and structures to reward risk-taking and penalize drift. But meaningful reform will only work if Congress delivers timely, predictable funding and if DoD leadership maintains a laser focus on operational outcomes, not institutional comfort. Clear national defense strategy and agile resourcing are prerequisites.
Skeptics will worry about risk and cost, but the status quo is already unaffordable. The cost of maintaining a marginal edge through slow, inefficient procurement is only growing as adversaries accelerate their own cycles of adaptation. As Rep. Rogers notes, “America faces the most serious security threats since WWII…. Our acquisition system is too slow and bureaucratic to arm our service members with what they need, when they need it”.
In sum, the U.S. faces a fork in the road. The lessons from Ukraine, and from our own checkered history of rapid response capability, are clear—the real innovation is not in the widget, but in the system that gets it to the warfighter when it matters. The SPEED Act is an overdue attempt to make mission acceleration the new normal, not a fleeting wartime experiment.
The stakes could not be higher. Whether in the trenches of eastern Ukraine or in the Indo-Pacific, America’s national security will be measured not by what we could do in theory, but by how fast we deliver in reality.
It’s time to replace old habits with a new doctrine of speed, effectiveness, and relentless mission focus. Our frontline troops—and our nation—deserve nothing less.
*Sources
[1] Battlefield Drones and the Accelerating Autonomous Arms Race in ... https://mwi.westpoint.edu/battlefield-drones-and-the-accelerating-autonomous-arms-race-in-ukraine/
[2] Battlefield Drones and the Accelerating Autonomous Arms Race in ... https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/battlefield-drones-and-the-accelerating-autonomous-arms-race-in-ukraine
[3] Ukraine's new ground drones are hitting the battlefield in ever ... https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-approves-new-ground-robots-to-relieve-infantry-strained-by-mobilization-crisis/
[4] The Rapid Equipping Force Customer Focused Innovation in the ... https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/rapid-equipping-force-customer-focused-innovation-us-army
[5] Pete-on-Federal-Drive.pdf https://ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/web/direct-files/attachments/50034799/07bb3531-b812-4233-b89f-6cdc6d776f6f/Pete-on-Federal-Drive.pdf
[6] SPEEDing up Procurement?: House Armed Services Bill Seeks to ... https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2025/07/speeding-up-procurement-house-armed-services-bill-seeks-to-reform-defense-acquisition/
[7] Text - H.R.3838 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): SPEED Act https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3838/text
[8] Rapid Equipping Force - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Equipping_Force
[9] House panel advances DOD policy bill with sweeping acquisition ... https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2025/07/16/house-panel-advances-dod-policy-bill-with-sweeping-acquisition-reforms/
[10] Pentagon Acquisition Has Innovation Problem, New Study Finds https://news.usni.org/2023/04/13/pentagon-acquisition-has-innovation-problem-new-study-finds
[11] The Nature of the Defense Innovation Problem https://acqirc.org/publications/research/the-nature-of-the-defense-innovation-problem/
[12] Defense Innovation Board Recommendations Continue to Advance ... https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4028373/defense-innovation-board-recommendations-continue-to-advance-national-security/
[13] Rogers and Smith Introduce Legislation to Fundamentally Reform ... https://armedservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5187
[14] HASC leaders release new defense acquisition reform plan to ... https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/hasc-leaders-release-new-defense-acquisition-reform-plan-to-speed-weapons-buying/
[15] Mike Rogers introduces bipartisan SPEED Act to streamline DoD's ... https://yellowhammernews.com/mike-rogers-introduces-bipartisan-speed-act-to-streamline-dods-weapons-procurement/
[16] House Armed Services leaders unveil bill to reform defense ... https://defensescoop.com/2025/06/09/house-armed-services-bill-speed-act-defense-acquisition-requirements-process/
[17] Rep. Mike Rogers Praises Bipartisan Passage of FY26 SPEED and ... https://calhounjournal.com/rep-mike-rogers-praises-bipartisan-passage-of-fy26-speed-and-ndaa-in-house-committee/
[18] SPEED Act Promises Meaningful Acquisition Reform https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2025/6/26/speed-act-promises-meaningful-acquisition-reform
[19] [PDF] the-rapid-equipping-force1.pdf - Steve Blank https://steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/the-rapid-equipping-force1.pdf
[20] SPEED Act - House Armed Services Committee https://armedservices.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx?IssueID=14899
[21] Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the ... https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modernizing-defense-acquisitions-and-spurring-innovation-in-the-defense-industrial-base/
