The United States is entering a new era of global competition amid technological advances at a pace not seen before. This ne- cessitates changes in how the United States develops and pro- cures its warfighting capabilities. While this transformation may appear daunting, our country has been in this position before.
In the mid-20th century, President Kennedy expressed a vision for the United States to go into outer space and land on the moon. The geopoliti - cal context was the Cold War with the Soviet Union—and the United States aimed to demonstrate technological prowess and space dominance. The field of systems engineering, which emerged during and after World War II, became essential as systems, especially weapons systems, grew increasingly complex. That helped mature NASA’s Apollo program. This, in turn, facilitated the integration of multiple major systems (launch ve - hicle, command/service module, and lunar module) and ensured that the design was sufficient for human space travel and could be operated in a low-gravity non-atmospheric environment. Although the Apollo program was a stretch for the United States, a ma - ture systems engineering system was not enough to achieve success. Roger Launius, a former NASA chief histo - rian, notes that NASA Administra - tor James E. Webb believed that the Apollo program challenge had more to do with program management than with engineering. The program needed to coordinate operational, lo - gistics, and financial activities of mul -
tiple NASA centers and approximately 400,000 personnel. A lot has happened since the Apollo program. Computing technol - ogy has accelerated exponentially, systems have become more com - plex, artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging consequential technology, and the Cold War has been replaced with a geopolitical competition envi - ronment between Great Powers in a multipolar world. This reality cannot be addressed using a Cold War, doc - ument-based acquisition system. The Department of War (DoW) and other Cabinet-level leadership recognize this dilemma and have provided the acquisition workforce with laws, exec - utive orders, policies, and directives that support or align with the Acqui - sition Transformation Strategy (ATS) announced in November 2025. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s pivotal changes espoused in ATS appear to lean on our former pro - cesses. DoW is trimming process and decisional fat from the acquisition profession, allowing us to focus on speed, significant risk analysis and mitigation, and ultimately the taxpay - ers’ return on investment through a steady state of national security and protection due to our military domi - nance. This steadier state uses tools, products, and processes, like Ca -
pability Portfolio Management led by program acquisition executives, Commercial Solution Offerings, other transaction authority, and the Modu - lar Open Systems Approach. However, one of the most impor - tant aspects of the November 2025 ATS, a document filled with pages outlining a fast-paced, forward march of change to acutely support our warfighters, is its enunciation of the power of digital engineering and, more importantly, digital acquisition.
[T]he Warfighting Acquisition University (WarU) defines digital acquisition as “the Warfighting Acquisition System’s data-driven, AI-enabled, model- centric approach to rapidly delivering integrated capability by unifying requirements, resources, experimentation, engineering, and contracting into a continuously monitored digital decision environment.” These two technological components serve as catalysts to achieve the ATS goals.
50 DEFENSE ACQUISITION MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER –OCTOBER 2026
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