AI in Defense Weekly - 12 November 2025

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SECWAR Wants Speed and Outcomes

Secretary Hegseth continues to press both the Department and Industry to, in short, be better. In a speech at the Naval War College last Friday, SECWAR laid down the gauntlet: “the adversary is the Pentagon bureaucracy,” and reminded us that too little has changed in spite of calls for reforms for decades. He also pointed his knife hand at a weak, lethargic, risk-adverse defense industrial base: provide outcomes quickly and innovate, or you will go the way of Blockbuster (my words, not his).

Earlier in the week, an internal Pentagon memo leaked that provided more details: establishing Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAE) to oversee buckets of Program Executive Offices (PEO); a new way to grade and score programs to incentivize speed and outcomes; streamline complex (and often conflicting) acquisition instructions and guidance; and, perhaps most importantly, to improve budget flexibility.

So what does this mean for the defense-tech industry?

• A preference for commercial solutions, with more use of OTAs and CSOs

• Scoring based on quickly and iteratively delivering capabilities, with financial incentives to deliver early (and penalties for being late)

• Avoiding vendor lock and single sources, promoting continued competition throughout the life-cycle of a program

• The guts of the Pentagon’s requirements, acquisition, and contracting system needs modernization and automation

I’m an optimist and the War Department is saying all the right things… but we’ve been talking about reforms for decades and have seen mostly incremental changes and adjustments.

Maybe GenAI ROI is Real…

Earlier this year, a much cited MIT study suggested that most GenAI pilots fail because of “tools that don’t learn, integrate poorly, or match workflows.” However, a recently released study from Wharton show’s a rapid acceleration of GenAI enterprises adoption. Some interesting insights…

• Best Results: Pilot and experiment, then quickly move towards enterprise-wide access

• From FOMO to ROI: Leaders want to see GenAI outcomes tied to profitability, productivity, or throughput improvements

• The Bottleneck is Human: Concerns of job loss, lack of training, and lack of clarity on guardrails and policies

But as Morgan Plummer points out in War on the Rocks, what really matter is if (and to what degree) Warfighters actually trust AI solutions.

Military AI: Back Office Work vs. Killer Robots

Breaking Defense examined the value of AI to help with military back office work (think everything from the Pentagon to a Brigade staff).

This kind of work: a mix of fixed and repetitive tasks, pattern matching, moving data from system A to system B, and deliberate decision-making marries up well with many tasks and products in the commercial world. The Department of War has focused on many of these roles and processes for automation, seeing the opportunity to free military personnel up to do, well, war stuff. As Michael Payne, nominee to take over CAPE, noted in his confirmation hearing, “The Department has accumulated significant technical debt, which inhibits our ability to fully embrace the power of the digital environment. This is especially prohibitive as the Department seeks to harness the power of AI.”

Don’t get me wrong: increasingly AI-powered autonomous systems in the air, at sea, under the water, and on the ground are game-changers… just less mature than AI-powered travel vouchers and unit status reports.

Other Articles Worth Reviewing (Briefly)

Artificial Intelligence Comes to the Ranks | Military.com. The Army wants to use AI to create better, more dynamic, and more realistic training environments.

The Army’s linking big guns, drones, and AI with its new command system and testing how it’ll fight future wars | Business Insider. The Army continues to iterate on NGC2 to accelerate the kill chain and connect disparate systems.

Pentagon’s CMMC Deadline Arrives Amid Government Shutdown | GOVCIO Media & Research. New cybersecurity requirements rolled out.

A Clean Sheet Redesign of the Small Business Innovation Research Program | War on the Rocks. The SBIR process is broken and needs reform.

Free ChatGPT for transitioning U.S. servicemembers and veterans | OpenAI. ChatGPT Plus offered free for one year to support their transition out of service.