BREAKING: War Sec Pete Hegseth previews national defense strategy, ‘super-charging’ of US defense industry for American global dominance

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke at the Reagan National Defense Forum, delivering a keynote speech to defense sector execs, high-ranking military, congressmen, and senators. The speech was a preview of the national defense strategy, said a Dept of War official close to the matter.

Hegseth's focus was on the concept of "peace through strength," which has been a key component of the Trump administration's posture on defense and war.

The plan is to build up the defense industrial complex to make the United States so formidable that no other nation or entity dares take up arms against America. Hegseth stated that this kind of deterrence would keep the United States in a powerful position worldwide and prevent wars from being undertaken against us.

Hegseth took aim at "so-called Republican hawks," saying that their policies and plans are nothing like those of former President Ronald Reagan, who brought that phrase and concept to the fore of the American war and defense mission. President Donald Trump, he said, "has inherited and restored President Reagan's powerful but focused and realistic approach to national defense."

Trump, like Reagan, Hegseth said, is working to build up the American military, to rebuild it. That effort has been the focus of Hegseth's trip to California, where he toured weapons and munitions factories and praised them for their manufacturing capabilities and their employment of American workers. The objectives of the US military under Reagan, comprised by the Weinberger doctrine, stipulated four key components: That the US should not commit troops unless American national interests are on the line, America is committed to winning, the objectives are clear and accomplishable, and only as a "last resort."

Hegseth argued in his remarks that in the wake of Reagan, "a generation of self-proclaimed neo-Reaganites abandoned Reagan's actual, wise policies in favor of unchecked neo-conservatism and economic globalism." Trump, he said, he diverted from this path and is "restor[ing] peace through strength on an enduring basis." 

"Out with utopian idealism, in with hard-nosed realism," Hegseth intoned as he praised Trump's "vision and determination" toward peace and diplomacy.

"At the newly renamed Department of War, thanks to President Trump's leadership and to Congress, we received a historic boost in funding last year, and believe that is only just the beginning," Hegseth said. Funds from this allotment will go to AI-powered autonomous weapons that may take human fingers off the trigger and replace them with programming.

"Wokeness, weakness, and war" is how Hegseth described the Defense Department during the Biden years. 

Hegseth defended the strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and other actions carried out under the Trump administration, such as strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the Houthis of Yemen. "The War Department will not be distracted by Democracy, building interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing, and feckless nation building," Hegseth said. 

"We will instead put our nation's practical, concrete interests first. We will deter war. We will advance our interests. We will defend our people. Peace is our goal, and in service of that objective. We will always be ready to fight and win decisively they've called along." He promised that US troops would not be sent to fight wars they should not have to.

The goal, he said, is fourfold:

"First, defending the US, homeland and our hemisphere. Second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation. Third, increased burden sharing for us, allies and partners. And fourth, super-charging US defense, industrial base as we apply President Trump's approach to flexible flexible realism, the first two lines of effort are the primary operational focus of the joint force for the simple reason that these missions matter the most for safety, freedom, and prosperity of Americans at the same time."

The "super-charging US Defense industrial base" is about applying "President Trump's approach to flexible realism."

This is the crux of the plan for the new War Dept. A new acquisition system that allows the government and the defense industry to move faster to bring new weapons to market. 

"Our objective is simple, if mindful, transform the entire acquisition system to rapidly accelerate the fielding of capabilities and focus on results," Hegseth continued. "The bottom line is a historic, generational and transformational changes that we will implement and will move us from the current prime contractor dominated system defined by limited competition, vendor lock cost plus contract stress budgets and frustrating protests, to a future powered by dynamic vendor space that accelerates production by combining investment at a commercial pace with the uniquely American ability to scale and scale quickly, all at the speed of urgency."