WASHINGTON — The Navy is inviting defense industry, venture capital and private investors to gather in Washington, DC, and Arlington, Va., next month for a briefing on the service’s Naval Rapid Capabilities Office, according to a public notice.
“This RCO event will include two related sessions that will cover the Department of the Navy’s (DoN) most pressing challenges, detail the RCO’s collaborative approach with industry to address these needs, and provide information on newly established pathways for engagement with the RCO,” according to the notice. The event will take place on Dec. 9 and 10.
Navy Secretary John Phelan established the new office in August while simultaneously disbanding several other similar agencies the service has stood up in recent years, Breaking Defense reported. The RCO and the now-disbanded offices all focused on expediting the acquisition process to bring capabilities to the field faster.
“The RCO will serve as the single accountable organization spanning all naval warfare domains, responsible for the rapid assessment, execution, fielding and transition of urgent solutions within a three-year timeframe to ensure U.S. maritime supremacy,” according to a memorandum announcing the office, which is led by Vice Adm. Seiko Okano, the Navy’s top uniformed acquisition official.
Establishing the RCO is one in a series of moves the Navy has made this year, alongside the other services, to overhaul acquisition directorates as part of a larger revamp being pushed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“These large defense primes need to change, to focus on speed and volume and divest their own capital to get there,” Hegseth told a group of industry executives earlier this month. “If we do that, the Department of War is, of course, big time supportive of profits. We are capitalists, after all. But if they do not, those big ones will fade away,” he added, using a secondary name for the Defense Department.
At that time, Hegseth announced the services would be transitioning from using Program Executive Offices to Portfolio Acquisition Executives, where a single accountable official would oversee numerous interrelated programs. The Navy began that transition in September with its new PAE for Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Breaking Defense reported.