Live: Hegseth announces changes to military arms sales

(NewsNation) — Defense War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced changes to the United States’ military sales at the National War College in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

The changes include maximizing the number of weapon systems available for combat, enhancing foreign sales, awarding “bigger, longer” contracts and focusing on speed and volume.

The Department of War will accept bids even if they don’t meet every requirement. It will also remove “excessive” reporting requirements and testing oversight.

“Anything that slows down government contracts will be eliminated,” he said.

In an address to industry leaders, military leaders and government officials as part of a larger effort to reform the military, Hegseth said the “adversary” is “Pentagon bureaucracy,” quoting former War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s 2001 speech.

“Innovation is stifled,” he said. “We must transform the way the department works and what it works on,” calling this a “matter of life and death.”

The changes are related to defense acquisition and the arms transfer process, and how it’s shared with allies.

“The defense acquisition system, as you know it, is dead,” Hegseth said. “It is now the war-fighting acquisitions system.”

Hegseth said the goal is to operate on “wartime footing,” rapidly accelerate capabilities, focus on results, and build an “arsenal of freedom.”

The military will focus on speed and volume to provide “capabilities to the battlefield.”

“If we want to prevent war, we must prepare now,” Hegseth said. “We’ve been too d— slow to respond.”

He also announced the end of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS), which is the process for determining military weapon system requirements. Additionally, the Department of War will establish the “Wartime Production Unit.”

The address is Hegseth’s second major speech to members of the military.

“We went to war with the army we had, not the army he or we wanted,” he said.

This comes as the Trump administration has boosted the military’s presence in the Caribbean to combat drug trafficking.

Hegseth said late Thursday that the U.S. military took out an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, killing three “narco-terrorists.”