WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Pentagon is hitting reset on how America builds its weapons. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says the U.S. can't afford years-long delays or red tape, as global threats rise.

He's calling for a model built for speed, one that delivers capabilities as quickly as the threats emerge.

"Our objective is simple: transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing," Sec. Hegseth said during a recent speech at the National War College.

He says it starts with tearing up decades of Pentagon red tape and making weapons delivery the priority, even if they aren't flawless.

"By taking greater calculated risks in how we build, buy, and maintain our systems, we will gain speed. Speed to more quickly provide capabilities to the battlefield," he explained.

These changes come in response to what's seen as a defense production crisis. Multiple international conflicts have exposed weaknesses in the U.S. industrial base, which has been slowed down by factory backlogs, supply shortages, and a depletion of skilled workers. This new model leans heavily on buying commercial products off-the-shelf, which can be quickly adapted for military use.

"Imagine being able to swap parts or software of a critical munition without needing to, I don't know, completely redesign the missile. It's common sense, but we're not doing it," said Hegseth.

Bryan Clark, a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute, says this would upend how major defense contractors have worked for decades, but points out the old way of doing business is unable to keep up with today's threats.

"If you're only able to tap into the defense industrial base, it's only big enough to support your peacetime needs, because you're not going to pay extra money to have extra factories sitting around idle. But if you have commercial suppliers, that have other customers and other things they're doing, you can spin them up in wartime to be able to deliver the kind of weapons, and airplanes, and ships, and things you need for the wartime need, sort of like we did in World War II, where a lot of commercial factories were re-purposed for military production," Clark told CBN News.

Experts agree this shift is key if the U.S. wants to retain its advantage on the battlefield.

"We don't have that luxury of time anymore, so we have to continually be adapting to prepare for the kinds of threats that are emerging on an almost weekly basis from our overseas rivals and adversaries," Clark said.

Conflicts in both Eastern Europe and the Middle East are providing real-time feedback on U.S. systems, highlighting what works and what has become obsolete.

"We are at war, at least at arm's length, right? So our systems are being used in Ukraine to go fight the Russians...And then in the Middle East, the Navy would say we definitely were at war over the last year, because they faced the most intense air battle since World War II from the Houthis and the Iranians. Which, that was a wake-up call for them, to say, even these relatively small actors can access commercial technology and make very effective weapons that will stress out our high-end missile defense systems, which perform very well," Clark explained.

If these reforms work, experts predict we'll see programs launched more frequently and cancelled faster, with smaller firms competing alongside defense giants. Because in modern warfare, speed is survival, and the U.S. can no longer afford to operate at a peacetime pace.

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