Pentagon Shakes Up Leadership While Army Modernizes Electronic Warfare Capabilities

Defense Indus­try Week­ly Roundup

Team, it’s been anoth­er event­ful week in the DoD, with major lead­er­ship changes at the Pen­ta­gon, sig­nif­i­cant mod­ern­iza­tion efforts in elec­tron­ic war­fare, and some con­cern­ing devel­op­ments in weapons test­ing over­sight. Let’s dive into what’s been happening.

Pentagon Leadership Overhaul Continues

The biggest sto­ry this week involves Defense Sec­re­tary Pete Hegseth’s con­tin­ued restruc­tur­ing at the Pen­ta­gon. Late Fri­day, we learned that Lt. Gen. Jef­frey Kruse was removed from his posi­tion as direc­tor of the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency (DIA), cit­ing “loss of confidence.”

What makes this par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is the tim­ing — it comes after a leaked DIA report con­tra­dict­ed the admin­is­tra­tion’s claims about the effec­tive­ness of June’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facil­i­ties. While the White House main­tained the strikes “com­plete­ly oblit­er­at­ed” Iran’s nuclear capa­bil­i­ties, the DIA assess­ment sug­gest­ed the dam­age was far more lim­it­ed, set­ting back their pro­gram by “maybe a few months, tops.”

Hegseth did­n’t stop there. He also dis­missed Vice Adm. Nan­cy Lacore, head of the Navy Reserve, and Rear Adm. Mil­ton Sands, who led Naval Spe­cial War­fare Com­mand. The rea­sons for these dis­missals remain unclear, but they’re part of a broad­er pat­tern of lead­er­ship changes that now includes the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Oper­a­tions, and sev­er­al oth­er senior positions.

Army’s Elec­tron­ic War­fare Evolution

On the mod­ern­iza­tion front, the Army is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant moves in elec­tron­ic war­fare. At TECHNET AUGUSTA 2025, offi­cials unveiled plans for the Mod­u­lar Mis­sion Pay­load (MMP) — a new elec­tron­ic war­fare kit designed to be inter­op­er­a­ble across vir­tu­al­ly any plat­form in the service.

Col. Scott Shaf­fer, project man­ag­er for EW and cyber with­in PEO IEW&S, explained that the MMP rep­re­sents a shift away from ded­i­cat­ed EW vehi­cles. As one offi­cial put it, “We’re past that point of where you’re going to have a ded­i­cat­ed EW vehi­cle try­ing to move across a bat­tle­field, anten­nas look­ing like a porcupine.”

The Army is pri­or­i­tiz­ing com­mer­cial off-the-shelf (COTS) and gov­ern­ment off-the-shelf (GOTS) solu­tions, with Shaf­fer not­ing, “If we’re only hit­ting 60 per­cent of the require­ments, that’s okay because we’re at least get­ting some­thing out there and it can be field­ed very soon.”

This push comes as the Army estab­lish­es 18 new EW com­pa­nies across its divi­sions, sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ing its elec­tron­ic war­fare capa­bil­i­ties at a time when elec­tro­mag­net­ic spec­trum dom­i­nance is increas­ing­ly critical.

Weapons Testing Office Gutted

In a move that’s rais­ing seri­ous con­cerns among over­sight advo­cates, the Pen­tagon’s weapons test­ing office has dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced its scope. The Direc­tor of Oper­a­tional Test and Eval­u­a­tion (DOT&E) cut the num­ber of pro­grams it over­sees from 251 to 152, with the work­force slashed from 94 employ­ees to just 46.

Most alarm­ing? The Army’s new XM7 rifle has been removed from over­sight — a deci­sion that crit­ics say eeri­ly par­al­lels the M16’s trou­bled his­to­ry. Greg Williams from the Project On Gov­ern­ment Over­sight (the orga­ni­za­tion tends to be left of cen­ter in its edi­to­r­i­al) warned that the XM7 “is a per­fect exam­ple of a weapon sys­tem that requires both devel­op­men­tal and oper­a­tional testing.”

Defense Sec­re­tary Hegseth defend­ed the cuts, claim­ing they’ll save $300 mil­lion annu­al­ly by elim­i­nat­ing “redun­dant, non-essen­tial, non-statu­to­ry func­tions.” But as Williams point­ed out, any short-term sav­ings could be dwarfed by the long-term costs of field­ing faulty weapons. The unasked ques­tion is, how do we increase the lethal­i­ty to the warfight­er while bal­anc­ing risk? 

Federal Acquisition Reform Accelerates

The FAR over­haul con­tin­ues at break­neck speed, with sig­nif­i­cant changes to Parts 8 and 12 that could reshape how the gov­ern­ment buys every­thing from IT ser­vices to con­struc­tion projects.

The biggest game-chang­er? Con­tract­ing offi­cers must now pri­or­i­tize Best-in-Class (BIC) con­tracts as their first source of sup­ply. If they want to use any­thing else, they need writ­ten jus­ti­fi­ca­tion approved by senior lead­er­ship. This change effec­tive­ly gives com­pa­nies on gov­ern­men­twide acqui­si­tion con­tracts a mas­sive com­pet­i­tive advantage.

Part 12 brings equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant changes, rais­ing the sim­pli­fied acqui­si­tion thresh­old for com­mer­cial items to $7.5 mil­lion — up from the pre­vi­ous $250,000 in prac­tice. The gov­ern­ment also elim­i­nat­ed a third of the claus­es pre­vi­ous­ly required for com­mer­cial con­tracts, stream­lin­ing the process considerably.

AI Tools Get Fast-Track Security Approval

FedRAMP announced it will pri­or­i­tize AI cloud ser­vices for secu­ri­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, respond­ing to a request from the Fed­er­al CIO Coun­cil. The new cri­te­ria focus on con­ver­sa­tion­al AI engines for rou­tine fed­er­al use, with pri­or­i­ty giv­en to tools that:

• Have demand from at least five CFO Act agencies
• Offer enter­prise-grade fea­tures like sin­gle sign-on and role-based access
• Guar­an­tee data sep­a­ra­tion and protection
• Are avail­able through GSA schedules
• Can meet FedRAMP require­ments with­in two months

Inter­est­ing­ly, none of the cur­rent AI offer­ings — includ­ing Google’s Gem­i­ni, Ope­nAI’s Chat­G­PT, or Anthrop­ic’s Claude — meet all five cri­te­ria yet.

Looking Ahead

As we head into Sep­tem­ber, Con­gress returns from recess fac­ing a poten­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down on Sep­tem­ber 30th. The spend­ing bat­tle will dom­i­nate the agen­da, com­pli­cat­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s efforts to claw back pre­vi­ous­ly approved funding.

The Army’s new Direc­torate for Strat­e­gy and Trans­for­ma­tion, led by Andrew Evans, aims for ini­tial oper­at­ing capa­bil­i­ty by mid-Octo­ber. This reor­ga­ni­za­tion insti­tu­tion­al­izes the trans­for­ma­tion efforts pre­vi­ous­ly han­dled by the ISR Task Force, includ­ing high-pro­file pro­grams like Athena-Sen­sor and HADES.

Mean­while, fed­er­al unions con­tin­ue fight­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing ter­mi­na­tions in court, with NASA, the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice, and oth­er agen­cies added to the list of enti­ties where unions are being elim­i­nat­ed for “nation­al secu­ri­ty” reasons.

The Bottom Line

This week’s devel­op­ments high­light the ten­sion between rapid mod­ern­iza­tion and prop­er over­sight. While the push for com­mer­cial solu­tions and stream­lined acqui­si­tion makes sense in today’s threat envi­ron­ment, the gut­ting of weapons test­ing capa­bil­i­ties rais­es legit­i­mate con­cerns about repeat­ing past mistakes.

The elec­tron­ic war­fare mod­ern­iza­tion efforts show promise, par­tic­u­lar­ly the move away from ded­i­cat­ed plat­forms toward mod­u­lar, adapt­able sys­tems. But suc­cess will depend on exe­cu­tion — and whether the Army can tru­ly deliv­er plug-and-play capa­bil­i­ties that work across diverse platforms.

As always, I’ll be watch­ing how these changes impact our defense indus­tri­al base and, most impor­tant­ly, our warfight­ers in the field. The push for effi­cien­cy is admirable, but not at the cost of effec­tive­ness or safety.

Stay tuned for next week’s update, where we’ll like­ly see more on the con­gres­sion­al spend­ing fight and hope­ful­ly some clar­i­ty on the Pen­tagon’s broad­er reor­ga­ni­za­tion plans.

Stay tuned for next week’s update. Until then, keep look­ing up!

September 4, 2025

Posted in DOD.