ARLINGTON, Va. — The Department of the Air Force (DAF) officially placed its procurement enterprise on a “wartime footing” on Thursday, Jan. 8, commencing the immediate implementation of the “Warfighting Acquisition System.”
The directive, issued to align with mandates from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, fundamentally restructures the service’s buying power by transitioning from the traditional Program Executive Officer (PEO) model to “Portfolio Acquisition Executives” (PAEs). The overhaul aims to replace compliance-heavy processes with a streamlined structure designed for speed and combat relevance.
From Programs to Portfolios The shift codifies a strategy first previewed by Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink in December 2025. Under the new architecture, PAEs receive broader authorities over resources, talent management, and mission-specific decision-making, effectively decentralizing power from the Pentagon to the mission level.
This structural change follows the U.S. Space Force’s recent moves to consolidate acquisition and operations, such as the activation of System Delta 80 to unify launch procurement and the stand-up of the MILCOMM & PNT System Delta late last year.
Commercial-First Posture For the Space Force, the implementation designates Space Access and Space Based Sensing and Targeting as the initial mission areas to be led by PAEs. These executives are charged with executing a “commercial first” strategy to bypass decade-long development cycles.
“Acquisition is now a warfighting function. We cannot be locked into decade-long development cycles,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the Space Force’s acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. “Our ‘commercial first’ approach allows us to harness the incredible innovation happening in the private sector, getting cutting-edge technology into the hands of our Guardians at the speed of a startup, not a bureaucracy.”
Operational Impact The reforms grant PAEs the ability to make “smart trades” between cost, schedule, and performance without extensive external oversight. The DAF stated that the goal is to field minimum viable products (MVPs) and iterate rapidly, a philosophy Purdy described as “speed with discipline.”
Effective immediately, the Air Force also designated its first tranche of PAEs covering five key sectors:
- Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management (C3BM)
- Fighters and Advanced Aircraft
- Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3)
- Propulsion
- Weapons
“This acquisition transformation is not just about buying things faster; it’s a fundamental overhaul of our culture to empower our Airmen… and deliver the integrated capabilities we need to deter and, if necessary, defeat our adversaries,” said William D. Bailey, performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.