The Pentagon is right to treat acquisition reform as a warfighting imperative. In an era when technology is evolving fast, and our adversaries have built arsenals designed to compete asymmetrically, those who can adapt at speed will win.
The effort to implement the Warfighting Acquisition System — transforming the acquisition system around speed, accountability and mission relevance — is both necessary and overdue.
However, if this reform is to deliver its full promise, it must extend beyond headquarters processes, portfolio structures and contracting authorities. Acquisition reform needs to migrate to the last tactical mile — where warfighters confront real-world friction, adapt in real time and generate operational lessons that should shape requirements, accelerate integration and compress acquisition timelines.
The true test of these reforms will not be how quickly decisions move through the system, but how effectively the system learns from the edge, where combat effectiveness is ultimately determined. The avenue to more certain victory leads to and from the warfighter, embracing analysis at the last tactical mile.
America’s warfighters operate at the edge, just as good operations analysts — like those in my own organization — must do in a fast-moving acquisition ecosystem. Successful acquisition reform will need insights from the edge, empowered by empirically trained analysts (uniformed and civilian) who understand systems, tactics, strategy and operations as seen from the perspective of the sailor, soldier, airman, guardian or Marine.
Speed in acquisition will not be achieved by process reform alone. Analysis at the tactical edge is often overlooked but in need of energy and capital to capture insights that drive decisions. Rapid acquisition to field systems that provide military utility demands a continuous learning loop between those who build capability and those who employ it under actual operating conditions — and the ability to measure results quickly.
In this loop, field-level insights should not be treated as downstream feedback after system deployment; they must become upstream drivers of requirements refinement, system integration and prioritization.
By institutionalizing this feedback loop, the department can reduce costly redesign cycles, shorten decision timelines and field capabilities that are not only delivered faster but have greater military value. This is consistent with the department’s own shift toward “speed of relevance,” operational outcomes, and fulfilling the promise to the warfighter.
The department does not need to build this learning architecture from scratch. Proven models already exist in pockets within the force. The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, for example, works closely with warfighters to test and analyze new systems. The operator perspective gets fused early into the technical development process, which then allows fielding at speed. This approach to development can outpace program-of-record development, even when going after the same warfighting gaps.
But this warfighter-centric approach should not be confined to formal military innovation organizations alone. Operator-informed analysis must extend across the defense ecosystem, accelerating integration, reducing acquisition timelines and scaling trusted results.
This is not mere assertion. When acquisition works, whether rapid or otherwise, it does so in part because analysts got in the foxhole, in the aircraft, or inside the combat information center to assess, validate and inform acquisition efforts from the point of view of the warfighter.
I know, because my analysts have led that kind of impactful work. We have designed and executed tests of prototypes in the real world, providing independent technical analysis of performance. Analysis at the tactical edge has uncovered critical problems that have to be addressed before warfighters can safely use systems. It has also revealed new tactical use cases for systems — ones that weren’t anticipated by the manufacturer.
The complexity of the counter-IED fight in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom offers a clear case where warfighter feedback alone was not enough to assess a technology’s utility. So many counter-IED systems were being pushed to the warfighters that it became important to understand which systems worked under which conditions.
Yet one of the most challenging problems in analysis is proving a negative. In other words, if an IED did not go off, was that because of the counter-IED system or not? Our analysts deployed alongside Marine Corps units to collect data and employed complex statistical methods to make that determination. Lives were at stake, and our analyses made a difference.
The department’s shift to the Warfighting Acquisition System is both necessary and timely. Victory on future battlefields belongs to the nation that can create military advantage through rapid acquisition and wartime adaptation. That much is clear. But enduring speed does not come from process redesign alone. It comes from building an acquisition enterprise that learns from the warfighter — where data is analog and results require deep insight to interpret.
If the department fully integrates such a learning loop, it will do more than shorten timelines. It will create a force that adapts faster, integrates better and delivers combat-relevant capability at the pace warfare demands. This is how acquisition reform becomes warfighting advantage.
Dr. Katherine A. McGrady is the president and chief executive officer of CNA, which operates the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research and development center that pioneered the field of operations analysis in support of the U.S. Navy during World War II.
