I/ITSEC 2025 — The Pentagon is looking to decrease the amount of unnecessary oversight in its modeling, simulation and training portfolios to allow operators to focus more on testing instead of jumping through bureaucratic hoops, Undersecretary of Defense Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey said today.
“Our acquisition strategy has several initiatives focused on testing and modeling, recognizing the need for modernized testing infrastructure, reducing bloated oversight and increasing the number of actual testers and test capacity,” Duffey said during a panel discussion here in Orlando at the annual I/ITSEC conference.
This is in line with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent acquisition overhaul that called for less bureaucratic oversight so operators and acquisition officials can get capabilities in the hands of the warfighter at speed, Duffey said.
By decreasing oversight, this will “empower” future Program Acquisition Executives (those replacing Program Executive Officers) and program managers to have more flexibility over their programs and be able to focus more on delivering capabilities on schedule instead of focusing purely on fulfilling every single requirement, he added.
“Some of this will require engagement with Congress to ensure we can secure the kind of authority and flexibility that we’re looking for,” he said. “For example, in the course of developing a system, if we discover that getting to that maximum requirement becomes schedule prohibitive, [we will empower] that PAE or that PM to be able to make a trade where it’s feasible to reduce the requirement in order to make sure we’re delivering on schedule.”
Such flexibility is vital especially when building out a training environment given that the global security environment has “deteriorated,” Duffey said, making it more important than ever to “develop more effective training programs that prepare our warfighters for the complexities of modern warfare, giving them the edge they need to succeed.”
During a separate panel discussion, William Bailey, who is performing the duties of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, echoed Duffey’s sentiments. He said that the department is seeing an “increasing crescendo of a need for a very complex training environment,” and with that, operators and system engineers need to be able to more quickly develop a training environment instead of giving all their attention to bespoke requirements.
“We will wait any year, and we will pay any dollar to get the mere 100 percent of those requirements, right? So I start to wonder about what is happening in the field while they’re waiting. I think that this is the message that we’re getting … what if that wasn’t a 96 on requirements, back to what if it was an 85?” Bailey said.