Shortly after the House released the Chairman’s Mark for the FY26 NDAA last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) passed their own vision for next year’s defense budget on Friday.
While there were some notable differences (we’ll get to that), the two chambers are clearly focused on spurring innovation, largely through their two competing acquisition reform bills—the Senate’s FoRGED Act and the House’s SPEED Act.
FORGE-ing Ahead: As we talked about last week, the House NDAA includes virtually the entire SPEED Act—a sign of just how much HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) want it enacted. (To note: The House’s NDAA heads to a full markup today, which, unlike the SASC’s markup, will be done publicly.)
The Fostering Reform and Government Efficiency in Defense (FoRGED) Act wasn’t quite so lucky. The full thing (SASC Chair Sen. Roger Wicker’s baby) doesn’t appear to have made the cut for the SASC FY26 NDAA, but a few key parts made it over the line:
- Streamlining acquisition by repealing or amending over 100 statutory clauses and outdated reporting requirements.
- Redefining Program Executive Officers (PEOs) as Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs), granting them expanded authority over requirements, resourcing, and procurement.
- Making consumption-based procurement permanent, allowing the DoD to buy software and services that can be metered and billed by usage at a predetermined price.
- Expanding the definition of nontraditional contractors to include firms without reimbursed R&D or bid costs—a move aimed at pushing primes to invest more heavily in new tech.
The logic of not including the full FoRGED Act in the NDAA, a senior congressional official told reporters on Friday, is that “it was designed to elicit responses. It was designed to be a starting point for hundreds of engagements.” Translation: we could see more FoRGED-flavored amendments as the Senate hammers out its final version and prepares to reconcile with the House.
Big spenders: One notable difference is that the SASC’s NDAA boosts the Pentagon’s topline budget by over $30B to $924.7B, not including the $113B set aside for defense in the Big, Beautiful Bill. Much of that added funding goes to shipbuilding and munitions. We may just get our $1T defense budget after all.
Upgrade ya: The Senate’s bill also introduces some fun new offices and changes that should be music to the ears of many readers, including:
- Making permanent the authority for DoD RDT&E centers to waive policies or regulations for increased “efficiency and effectiveness.”
- Creating an Irregular Warfare Exercise Lab and directing the Army to launch a soldier-inspired innovation program.
- Establishing a Joint Program Office to help field innovative non-programs of record with foreign partners—a potential pipeline for injecting fresh weapons systems into US security cooperation.
- Authorizing combatant commands to “conduct experimentation, prototyping, and technology demonstrations” to meet region-specific needs.
- Directing the DoD to report on Financial Management Regulation changes that would let RDT&E, Procurement, and O&M funds cover the entire software lifecycle.
The base gets a boost: The bill also strengthens the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program and expands the Industrial Base Fund, which supports efforts “to monitor and expand the DIB, address urgent operational needs, and mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities.” Build, baby, build.
The SASC NDAA also:
- Creates an Economic Defense Unit inside OSD to “synchronize economic competition efforts across the DoD.”
- Enables the Pentagon to start covering private financing costs on contracts to better align public-private investment in “key areas.”
“My colleagues and I have prioritized reindustrialization and the structural rebuilding of the arsenal of democracy,” SASC Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) said in a statement. “Accordingly, we have set forth historic reforms to modernize the Pentagon’s budgeting and acquisition operations.” He also thanked SASC ranking member Jack Reed (D-RI) for his cooperation.
In a time of such polarization, it’s truly heartwarming to see lawmakers set aside their differences to deliver a $1T defense budget. There may be hope for us yet.