Trump’s executive order on defense acquisition may finally deliver real reform

President Donald Trump’s new executive order, “Modernizing Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” could mark a pivotal moment for US defense procurement, according to Jeffrey Nadaner, a former top Pentagon official. Writing in an 10 April 2025 commentary for Defense One, Nadaner argues the order breaks with decades of half-hearted reforms and bureaucratic inertia by explicitly directing DOD to adopt faster, more commercial-style acquisition methods.

The order echoes a 6 March 2025 memo from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth mandating that the Pentagon use commercial solutions openings and other transaction authorities—tools already available but underused—as the default mechanism for acquiring software and innovative technologies. A FAR rewrite indeed.

Among the reforms: shrinking the 1,500-page DFARS, overhauling the aging JCIDS system for validating military requirements, and finally enforcing the 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, which requires the government to buy commercially available products using fixed-price contracts. Nadaner calls this a “historic opportunity” to move away from the traditional model of cost-plus contracts and bloated custom-built IT systems.

Lasting reform, he writes, depends on leadership continuity. He urges the Pentagon to double the length of program management tours, so officers can see complex projects through from start to finish—something more common during World War II and the early Cold War.

The Pentagon has sixty days to deliver an implementation plan to the White House.