What will it take for acquisition reform to finally succeed? New org charts aren’t enough: The people in the organization need new incentives.
Since last fall, in a sweeping organizational overhaul, all three military departments have replaced program executive officers with Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs). The Army stood up six, the Navy nine. The Space Force completed its transition in July with nine. The Air Force redesignated all of its program executive officers as PAEs effective July 4. These new executives have the power to launch sustainable reform that, at long last, shifts defense acquisition from a focus on procedural compliance to one on accomplishing the mission — if and only if they use that power to take two crucial and complementary steps. First, they must provide believable, executable top cover for contracting officers, not just lip service about taking risks. Second, they must refocus performance metrics to measure whether and how quickly acquisition outcomes produce mission results.
Both moves fall within the PAEs’ authority under Section 1802 of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. Modeling of acquisition workforce behavior shows that the two together break a portfolio out of the compliance trap; neither one alone does.
