Thank you Under Secretary LaPlante — for the introduction, for your leadership of DoD's acquisition enterprise, and for reigniting a regular convening of our most senior acquisition professionals.
And on behalf of Secretary Austin and all of DoD, I want to thank all of you, and the teams you lead, for what you do each day for our nation.
As Program Executive Officers, you are on the front lines of delivering combat-credible capabilities to the warfighter at speed and scale, so they can deter aggression against America, our allies and partners, and our interests… and win if called to fight.
Together, you supervise hundreds of acquisition programs and projects. Your top customer is the warfighter — who always needs more, better, and faster — but you're also stewards of taxpayer dollars, requiring your utmost diligence, responsibility, and principled decision-making.
Your jobs are among DoD's most complicated. And sometimes the demands can feel in tension:
You've got to move fast, while also providing sufficient rigor across the acquisition lifecycle.
You've got to uphold safeguards that prevent waste, fraud, and abuse, while also using every tool at our disposal.
You've got to work with longtime defense companies that build things few others do, and have black-belts in navigating bureaucratic processes, while also opening doors to collaborate better with non-traditional defense contractors, commercial tech companies, start-ups, and scale-ups.
So I know the work is never easy. And it's only made harder by the recurring nightmare of continuing resolutions that befall us every year at about this time. CRs tie your hands, stall our momentum, and ultimately overload your teams with too much to do and not enough time to do it. They're bad for the taxpayer, and for the warfighter. And the Secretary and I will keep stressing that with Congress.
At the same time, we in DoD must keep doing all we can to self-solve, get out of our own way, and work better together and with others. That's what this summit is all about… sharing solutions and best-practices, across services and agencies, to meet the Joint Force's needs at greater speed and scale.
There's no mistaking why that imperative has taken on more urgency in recent years. Because the main strategic competitor we face today is different from the rival we faced during the Cold War — a rival who was relatively slow and lumbering, compared to the PRC of the present.
So to outcompete our pacing challenge in this generational era of strategic competition — today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future — we have to shift our mindsets.
At the enterprise level, we've been doing a lot to meet the moment: from delivering DoD's most strategy-aligned budgets ever, to launching efforts like Competitive Advantage Pathfinders and the Replicator initiative that are unlocking solutions and burning down barriers to scale.
And you've been doing your part as acquisition professionals, with Under Secretary LaPlante as your champion — for instance, taking the lead on cultivating the innovation workforce we need, shaving years off delivery timelines with CAPs and Replicator, and using more flexible acquisition pathways and innovative contracting authorities.
In fact, just last month, at one of the Pentagon's most senior-level governance fora, Dr. LaPlante and the Service Acquisition Executives shared many examples of what you're doing to meet the moment. And it was impressive.
Still, we cannot get complacent. With the PRC we are in a persistent, generational competition for advantage, and we have to double down with urgency and confidence.
That means taking risk when we must, and moving with all deliberate speed wherever possible — without compromising safety or effectiveness, because unsafe or ineffective capabilities aren't useful to the warfighter.
It also means looking for synergies and savings, leveraging commercial solutions first, and driving more integration, interoperability, and interchangeability across platforms and systems.
It means engaging regularly with your customers — to better grasp their challenges so you can iterate faster — and collaborating more across programs, services, and agencies to design joint solutions.
And most important, it means focusing relentlessly on execution and delivery at the pace the warfighter needs.
Remember, as Under Secretary LaPlante has stressed, production is deterrence. Even in the face of budgetary pressures and appropriations uncertainty, we need you, acquisition leaders, to minimize cost and schedule overruns, and optimize resource allocation, to maximize mission impact.
As hard as all that sounds, you are more than up to the task. The Secretary and I have full faith in you. Over decades of working on defense and national security issues, we've seen time and again how DoD's acquisition professionals can move heaven and earth to get the job done.
And your work matters.
Just as you're grappling with challenges that accrued over many years and decades, America's ability to win future wars will be shaped by what the acquisition community does today — years in advance, we hope — to deliver for the warfighter tomorrow.
You and your teams are at the vanguard of that. And you've got to be at the top of your game.
Because wars are fought by militaries, but they are won by nations. We're counting on you to help harness the best from America's innovation ecosystem — in government, the private sector, and beyond — so that our warfighters always get what they need, on time and on target.
Now, I realize it's easy, and tempting, to succumb to the tyranny of tiny tasks… to do what's comfortable… to stick with business as usual.
But that's how we lose. That's what Beijing and Moscow want. And that, we cannot abide.
So instead of rejecting the innovative, the disruptive, the mavericks — embrace them. Hold them accountable, but embrace them.
Focus on outcomes, not inputs. Use all your tools, not just the textbook ones. Have the creativity and courage to try new things, even if they might fail.
We are a "show me" culture. So be the leaders that show the way. Be the culture change we need, and lift up those you lead so they can do the same.
I know you will. Thanks again for everything you do, and have a great summit.