Headlines: New Strategy, Old Problems

Welcome to the latest edition of Defense Tech and Acquisition.

• The White House published a new National Security Strategy

• Drone dominance will shape the future of warfare.

• Army seeks agility and flexibility with new acquisitions

• Navy cancels the troubled Frigate program and picks an LSM.

• Air Force ditches reorg, goes all in on AI wargaming

• Space Force leans into commercial, pursuing new training

• Golden Dome sees large IDIQ and SBI awards, opportunities ahead

• Russia sees its laser plane in flames, AUS pursues acq reform

• There should be some interesting announcements at Reagan National Defense Forum today. You can watch here after completing your reading homework.

2025 National Security Strategy

A “strategy” is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means: it begins from an accurate assessment of what is desired and what tools are available, or can realistically be created, to achieve the desired outcomes. A strategy must evaluate, sort, and prioritize.

• We want to recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and—if necessary—win them quickly and decisively.

• We want the world’s most robust industrial base. American national power depends on a strong industrial sector capable of meeting both peacetime and wartime production demands.

• That requires not only direct defense industrial production capacity but also defense-related production capacity. Cultivating American industrial strength must become the highest priority of national economic policy.

• Reindustrialization – The future belongs to makers. The U.S. will reindustrialize its economy, “re-shore” industrial production, and encourage and attract investment in our economy and our workforce, with a focus on the critical and emerging technology sectors that will define the future.

• We will do so through the strategic use of tariffs and new technologies that favor widespread industrial production in every corner of our nation, raise living standards for American workers, and ensure that our country is never again reliant on any adversary, present or potential, for critical products or components.

• Reviving our Defense Industrial Base – A strong, capable military cannot exist without a strong, capable defense industrial base. The huge gap, demonstrated in recent conflicts, between low-cost drones and missiles versus the expensive systems required to defend against them has laid bare our need to change and adapt.

• America requires a national mobilization to innovate powerful defenses at low cost, to produce the most capable and modern