Biden Pentagon Reformer Horowitz Applauds Hegseth’s ‘Big Swing’ at Acquisition Reform, Cites China Threat – RedState
Michael Horowitz, a former senior Biden administration official charged with rapidly implementing emerging capabilities, told RedState this week that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s overhaul of acquisitions is both urgent and fundamentally nonpartisan.
“Accelerating the adoption of innovation at high speed and scale to ensure that the U.S. military remains the best in the world and is prepared to deter or defeat the Chinese military in particular, is urgent and nonpartisan,” Horowitz said.
The rare nod from a former Obama-Biden Pentagon adviser stands in stark contrast to persistent attacks by senior Democrats on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
Senator Jack Reed (RI) and Representative Adam Smith WA-09) criticized Hegseth’s aggressive desire to accelerate in weapons procurement as risky and likely to undermine testing rigor, accountability and workforce stability. Secretary Hegseth, however, deliberately accepts the risk. “We intend to increase acquisition risk in order to decrease operational risk,” he said in his November 7 speech.
Horowitz agreed and recently written a memoir entitled It’s time to accept risk in defense acquisitions. He told Air & Space Forces magazine that the Pentagon “deserves to be commended for taking a big step in trying to address the pathologies at the center of the acquisition process,” adding that the changes are “designed to encourage competition and encourage speed” in the face of the Chinese threat and the pace of technological change.
Secretary Hegseth’s bold reforms would cut weapons procurement timelines in half by removing 70 percent of the Pentagon’s bloated rulebook. The goal is to obtain advanced equipment like hypersonic missiles, AI systemsand drones are invading American arsenals years faster than today. The plan sets strict deadlines, including dashboards to track prototypes, initial operational capacity and production ramps within 180 days of implementation, while integrating AI tools to quickly evaluate bids and prioritize suppliers capable of meeting accelerated deadlines. This overhaul targets a broken system that allows China to build warships three times faster than the United States, while American programs languish under mountains of red tape and compliance hurdles.
SEE ALSO: How our elite troops are bypassing red tape for new war technologies
Hegseth eliminates generals and scraps obsolete weapons to revive the 21st century military
It’s no surprise that Horowitz supports Hegseth’s push to end this nightmare and prioritize speed.
As the architect of Replicator, he saw the drone program sprint take 18 to 24 months in slow motion when Pentagon leaders were expected to do it. giving over 40 briefings to Congress just for a change 0.05 percent of the budget, a perfect example of the bureaucracy he now wants to eliminate.
According to him, it is not enough to speed up the old process. True success, he believes, must be transformative. “Successfully implementing these reforms requires delivering on the promise of not only changing how we buy things, but also changing what we buy,” Horowitz said.
The urgency is undeniable. While the United States has been trapped in decades-long development cycles, China’s navy has closed the gap, growing from about 230 warships in 2005 to more than 370 today. Beijing’s new destroyers and aircraft carriers are ramping up at a pace the U.S. naval industry won’t be able to keep up with.
The Pentagon’s track record proves why simple adjustments will not be enough. The army The Future Combat Systems program swallowed up $32 billion before cancellation in 2009, with nothing implemented. The 22 years The RAH-66 Comanche program burned around $8 billion for two prototypes and was phased out in 2004. And the F-35 continues its decades-long march toward a $2 trillion lifetime cost while full capacity moves further and further away.
In all cases, bureaucracy, demand creep, and bureaucratic paralysis have led to delays and waste instead of weapons. Horowitz believes Hegseth’s reforms can break this cycle.
Horowitz did not respond directly to Democrats on Capitol Hill who criticized Hegseth’s reforms, but he nonetheless delivered an indirect rebuke: Many of the existing regulations presented as “safeguards” simply protect large historical contractors and their political supporters, not troops who need new equipment. He was particularly blunt about the new Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs), who are senior officials tasked by Hegseth with eliminating failing programs and redirecting money to those that actually work.
“Frankly, what will make PAEs successful is if they are able to move on from projects that aren’t working and reallocate funds to projects that aim to accelerate the spread of capabilities,” Horowitz said.
In other words: undo the failures, pour money into the winners, and quickly establish a new arsenal of freedom or watch China go further.
Editor’s note: Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the warrior ethos is returning to the U.S. military.
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