Coming soon: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acquisition reform. Three days before his scheduled address to defense CEOs and acquisition officials, Valerie Insinna of Breaking Defense obtained what she says is a six-page draft memo laying out “sweeping changes to the way [the U.S. military] buys weapons and platforms.” However, since the memo was still in draft form, “It is unknown if Hegseth intends to announce these changes from the stage,” Insinna reported Tuesday morning. 

Among the changes: Hegseth wants to rename the “defense acquisition system” to the “warfighting acquisition system,” which is in line with Hegseth’s departmental rebranding strategy that congress (as required by law) has not approved or formalized. 

According to the memo, “Speed to capability delivery is now our organizing principle: the decisive factor in maintaining deterrence and warfighting advantage.” To that end, Hegseth is seeking “fewer internal review processes and new incentives both for DoD officials and industry,” Insinna writes. 

Hegseth: “The core principle of this transformation is simple: place accountable decision makers as close as possible to program execution, eliminate non value added layers of bureaucracy, and prioritize flexible trades and timely delivery at the speed of relevance,” the memo reads. 

Expert reax: With these new plans, Hegseth is effectively saying, “I want to prioritize speed,” Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute told BD. “What he’s not saying is, ‘I’m willing to accept higher costs and lower performance.’ But that is the reality, that when you prioritize one, you’re making sacrifices in one or both of the others,” said Harrison. Continue reading, here.

ICYMI: Hegseth’s past and future acquisition changes, rolled up by Breaking Defense, here. 

General Atomics has flown a second collaborative combat aircraft, according to new images released by the company on Thursday. 

Photos show two of the company’s YFQ-42A collaborative combat aircraft sitting on a runway. Another image shows one of the drone wingmen in the sky, with a different tail number than the drone wingman that took flight back in August. The reveal comes days after neoprime contractor Anduril announced it had notched its first flight, which was delayed amid software issues to make the test semi-autonomous. Both companies are competing in the Air Force’s CCA competition.

General Atomics’ first CCA flight this summer was not semi-autonomous. When asked by Defense One when General Atomics would reach that milestone, C. Mark Brinkley, a company spokesman, said “I can’t speak to the timelines on our flight tests on YFQ-42A, but this software isn’t holding us back” pointing to more than 300,000 push-button takeoffs and landings with no Class A mishaps across its fleet. “It’s like asking Michael Jordan if he can dunk,” Brinkley said. “We can dunk.” 

Related reading: “Rheinmetall closing in on multi-billion-euro ammunitions contract, CEO tells Reuters,” Reuters reported Tuesday from Berlin

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Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson, Tom Novelly, and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1979, the Iran hostage crisis began. 

Around the Defense Department

When it comes to resuming U.S. nuclear weapons tests, President Trump and his energy secretary are of different minds, the New York Times reported Monday after interviews with both officials aired on TV in the past 48 hours. 

Recap: Trump announced his order to resume nuclear testing “immediately” last Wednesday. It was initially unclear if he was referring to tests of nuclear-weapons delivery systems—like ballistic missiles, e.g., or actual nuclear detonations. But he seemed to clear that up when he told CBS News in an interview that other nations “test way under—underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration. They test and we don’t test. We have to test. And Russia did make—a little bit of a threat the other day when they said they were gonna do certain forms of a different level of testing. But Russia tests, China– and China does test, and we’re gonna test also.” 

As we noted last week, Russia and China haven’t detonated nuclear weapons at all this century. Russia did it last in 1990, when it was the Soviet Union at the time; and China last tested weapons in 1996. France tested a nuclear weapon in 1996 as well. India and Pakistan conducted two tests each in 1998. And North Korea tested weapons in 2006, 2009, 2013, twice in 2016, and again in 2017. The Pentagon last detonated a nuclear weapon in 1992. 

Trump told CBS, “Doesn’t it sorta make sense? You know, you make—you make nuclear weapons, and then you don’t test. How are you gonna do that? How are you gonna know if they work?”

However, Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox on Sunday, “These will be non-nuclear explosions. These are just developing sophisticated systems so that our replacement nuclear weapons are even better than the ones they were before.”

So, what gives? David Sanger and Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the Times write, “Trump may have been referring to an ongoing, if still classified, argument within the intelligence agencies and national laboratories about whether China and Russia have conducted what amount to small tests…[But] The evidence is vague, and experts disagree on the quality of the evidence.”

Expert reax: “It makes everyone afraid when the guy in charge of America’s nuclear weapons doesn’t appear to know what he’s talking about,” Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor focusing on nuclear weapons, told the Times. Read the rest (gift link), here. 

Brief analysis: Trump’s threat to attack Nigeria this weekend amounts to “whiplash” for recent Pentagon priorities, Reuters reported Monday. “Pentagon officials broadly expected Trump’s administration would prioritize border security, China’s growing military might and pressuring NATO allies to do more to stand up to Russia. But Trump’s announcements in the past week on everything from nuclear testing to Nigeria have caught many off guard by appearing to reshuffle Pentagon priorities,” a trio of reporters write. 

Regarding possible U.S. strikes inside Nigeria, one U.S. military official told Reuters, “I think we are all learning about this at the same time.” More, here. 

Additional reading: 

• “Marines fire entire command for Osprey squadron in Hawaii,” Military Times reported Tuesday; 
• “USS Gerald R. Ford Leaves Mediterranean Bound for U.S. Southern Command,” U.S. Naval Institute News reported Tuesday; 
• “Supreme Court weighs if contractor can be sued for wartime negligence,” Military Times reported Monday;
• And “This soldier built a side hustle on TikTok and Instagram and says it’s now paying better than the Army,” Business Insider reported Monday.  

Etc.

U.S. pitches UN on two-year mandate for Gaza security force. On Monday, officials sent a draft memo to several UN Security Council members proposing to send an international force into Gaza for at least two years, Axios reported Tuesday. 

Breaking: Israel shelled Gaza City on Tuesday, an apparent violation of the ceasefire, Al Jazeera reported.

Ukraine revamps military service to attract recruits. New York Times: “Until now, Ukrainian soldiers have served under open-ended contracts, leaving them with no control over their future. Enthusiasm for enlistment has waned, with Ukrainians fearful that indefinite duty amounts to a one-way ticket to the front line. Under the new system, both current service members and recruits will be able to sign fixed-term contracts lasting one to five years, Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal said Monday night as he announced the plan.” Read about that and other changes, here.

Someone else is building fake islands in the South China Sea: Vietnam. The southeast-Asian country has piled dirt, sand, and concrete on nearly two dozen rocks and other features in a bid to forestall Chinese dominance of the strategic waterway, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Satellite images show that Vietnam has created new land on all 21 rocks and so-called low-tide elevations—reefs that were previously submerged at high tide—that it occupies in the Spratlys. That compares with China’s seven such artificial islands in the archipelago.”

Citing CSIS’s Island Tracker site, WSJ writes: “As of March, Vietnam had built more than 2,200 acres of artificial land in the South China Sea, compared with just under 4,000 acres constructed by China.” Read on, here.

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