Pentagon's Warfighting Acquisition System: What It Means for NATO and UK Defence

What Changed in Washington

On 7 November 2025, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum that effectively retired the Defence Acquisition System (DAS) that had governed Pentagon procurement for nearly four decades. Its replacement — the Warfighting Acquisition System (WAS) — shifts the primary acquisition metric from cost control to speed of capability delivery. At the Air and Space Forces Association (AFA) 2026 Warfare Symposium in February, Department of the Air Force acquisition leaders laid out what this looks like in practice.

The reform rests on five pillars. Rebuilding the Defence Industrial Base through multi-year contracts and an Economic Defence Unit that deploys capital directly. Empowering the acquisition workforce through PAEs — single leaders who own requirements, contracting, testing, and budget for entire capability portfolios, serve minimum four-year terms, and get paid on results. Slashing regulatory overhead by eliminating the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS), compressing the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), and shifting to Other Transaction Authorities as the preferred contracting vehicle. Mandating digital engineering and the Modular Open Systems Approach across all major programmes. And overhauling life cycle sustainment with supply chain illumination and customised support plans.

The centrepiece is the PAE. Where the old system distributed authority across committees — one for requirements, another for acquisition, a third for budget — the PAE holds all three. Gen. Dale White, director for Critical Major Weapon Systems, described the intent plainly at the AFA panel: integrating the three-legged stool of requirements, acquisition, and resourcing under single accountable leadership.

What Transfers to NATO and the UK

Not everything in the WAS reform travels well. The FAR compression, Truth in Negotiations Act (TINA) elimination, and JCIDS removal are responses to specifically American regulatory architecture. But several elements map directly onto problems that NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) and UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) procurement teams face daily.

PAE-style portfolio consolidation is the strongest candidate. NSPA already operates procurement clusters; giving cluster leads integrated authority over requirements, contracting, and resourcing within approved programme ceilings would cut the consensus-based friction that slows multi-national procurement. On the UK side, the newly created National Armaments Director role — controlling over £30 billion in investment — is structurally analogous to the US Service Acquisition Executive. Delegating PAE-equivalent authority beneath the NAD into Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) delivery teams would accelerate outcomes without requiring new legislation.

Outcome-based metrics are equally transferable. Measuring time from validated need to operational fielding, rather than procedural compliance milestones, aligns with both the NATO Rapid Adoption Action Plan (June 2025) and the UK Defence Industrial Strategy 2025, which commits to procurement at “wartime pace.” MOSA adoption through the NATO Standardisation Office would reduce vendor lock-in and improve cross-national interoperability — a standing Alliance priority that currently lacks a forcing mechanism.

The Regulations That Would Have to Change

UK MoD

The Procurement Act 2023 mandates competitive tendering with defined national security exemptions. Expanding those flexibilities for iterative, prototype-based acquisition pathways would be the first legislative requirement. The MoD Acquisition Operating Framework — which defines approval and assurance processes — would need restructuring around portfolio authority delegation with outcome-based gateway reviews rather than stage-gate compliance checks. The Single Source Contract Regulations (SSCR), administered through the Single Source Regulations Office (SSRO), serve a transparency function analogous to the US TINA requirements that the WAS reform proposes eliminating; any UK equivalent of that deregulation would require convincing HM Treasury that alternative accountability mechanisms exist. The DE&S operating model itself would need consolidation under portfolio leads with integrated authority.

NATO NSPA

NATO Financial Regulations govern all Agency procurement and require competitive tendering above thresholds. Amending these for portfolio-based delegation would require agreement from contributing nations through the Agency Supervisory Board — a consensus process that is itself the kind of governance friction the reforms aim to reduce. The NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP) would need to be decoupled at the execution level: nations identify capability requirements through the Alliance-wide process, but procurement execution should not be bound to consensus-based timelines. The NATO Rapid Adoption Action Plan already points in this direction, committing to 24-month technology adoption cycles. WAS-style portfolio authority would accelerate that commitment.

Where the Risks Concentrate

The two highest-rated risks are connected. Both stem from the absence of a STANAG bridging Allied Committee 327 (AC/327, the Life Cycle Management Group) QA competence requirements and Allied Committee 326 (AC/326, the Coordinating Ammunition Safety Group) technical knowledge requirements. This gap exists today but becomes operationally dangerous when procurement timelines compress. International Ammunition Technical Guidelines (IATG) Module 01.90 and UK Explosives Safety and Ammunition (ESA) National Occupational Standards Key Role 6 could close this gap — and should be pursued as standalone initiatives regardless of whether WAS-style reforms are adopted.

ISC Assessment

The WAS reform is not a template for copying. It is a signal — the world’s largest defence spender has concluded that process compliance is a luxury that deterrence cannot afford. The question for NATO and the UK is not whether to replicate the American model but whether to learn from its core insight: that accountability concentrated in competent individuals, measured against delivery outcomes, outperforms accountability distributed across committees and measured against procedural milestones.

The answer, based on ISC’s analysis of eight UK regulations and six NATO governance layers, is that selective adoption is both achievable and advantageous — provided the competence gap for Weapons, Ordnance, Munitions and Explosives (WOME) procurement personnel is closed first. Speed without competence is not agility. It is negligence with shorter reporting cycles.