Executive Order Expedites Defense Procurement and Increases Reliance on Private Sector

The Trump administration is attempting to streamline the glacial procurement process at the Department of Defense (DOD), while increasing reliance on existing private sector products.

Executive Order (EO) 14265, released on April 9, 2025, directs the DOD to, “rapidly reform our antiquated defense acquisition processes with an emphasis on speed, flexibility, and execution,” including a preference for “commercial solutions,” or those products and services that already exist in the private sector.  Such a shift will enable the DOD to rapidly plug in commercially available products as opposed to building duplicative systems, which is costly, lengthy, and wasteful.

The EO also directs the DOD to “promote expedited and streamlined acquisitions.”  It orders a review of internal regulations that impede faster procurement and directs the secretary of defense to make changes to implementation guides, manuals, and regulations where necessary.

According to an April 11, 2025, Defense One article, the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Digital Services is already moving to improve acquisition through a pilot project that uses artificial intelligence (AI) rather than staff to review proposals and information requests for conflicts of interest and classified material.  Instead of creating its own AI system, the Navy plugged in an existing commercial product.  When asked how much that would save, an official stated, “It depends on the scale of how big those teams are…But if you’re taking a manual process, this is someone’s 40-hour work week for 52 weeks a year, and this is turning into a process that can be done in like 30 seconds.”

Of course, the need for the Pentagon to move faster and rely more heavily on existing private-sector products is nothing new.  Virtually every recent administration has taken a crack at the problem, with past DOD secretaries like Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, and Ash Carter all emphasizing such a shift during their time at the helm. 

That said, the current timeframe, where the DOD might soon receive a trillion-dollar budget, should serve as an inflection point to increase acquisition speed and achieve savings where possible.  As Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Paparo stated at the February 13, 2025, Honolulu Defense Forum “We’ve got to do some innovation by subtraction, removing bureaucratic obstacles within our system that impedes our progress – every unnecessary review, every duplicative process that damages our readiness.”  He added that the Pentagon needs, “procurement at the speed of combat, not at the speed of committees.”

EO 14265 serves as a firm step in the right direction to achieve this much-needed increase in efficiency.