Most people wouldn’t get too excited about the release of a thousand-page bill draft. But for the defense tech world, there’s a lot to smile about in the Chairman’s Mark of the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
For those lucky enough not to spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill: The Chairman’s Mark is the first formal version of the NDAA—written by hand in a candle-lit back room somewhere in Alabama by HASC Chairman Mike Rogers (rumor has it).
The Chairman’s Mark is a draft, and it’ll head to the HASC for debate and markup on July 15, so a lot can change. But it’s also a pretty good indication of where we’re headed defense-wise, so let’s get into it.
Big picture: The Chairman’s Mark doesn’t increase the Pentagon’s $961.6B topline budget request—including the $150B routed through the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.” But it does feature a few big, big changes. (Hint: Things are SPEEDing up.)
SPEED-y quick: The first exciting piece of news is that defense acquisition and requirements reform take center stage in the Chairman’s Mark.
Pretty much the entirety of the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery (SPEED) Act—which Rogers and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the top HASC Democrat, introduced last month—is in the NDAA markup. That means that if Rogers gets his way, the DoD could majorly change the (admittedly very broken) way it buys kit.
For those less familiar, here are a few SPEED highlights:
- BOOST (Sec. 1834): The Bridging Operational Objectives and Support for Transition Program requires the DIU “to establish a program to support the transition of technologies into established capability development and procurement activities of the military services.” This should help bridge prototype-stage tech into acquisition programs as an “on-ramp to integration of the needed technology into programs of record.”
- RAPID (Sec. 1812): The bill requires the Pentagon to establish a “Requirements, Acquisition, and Programming Integration Directorate” (RAPID), which serves “as the principal forum to integrate joint capability requirements, resource analysis, mission-based experimentation, and acquisition program leadership.” This is meant to streamline the DoD’s procurement bureaucracy into a single forum.
- OTAs (Sec. 1831): The bill amends Title 10 of the US Code “to remove limitations on use of Other Transaction Authority” (OTA). In other words, it removes the statutory requirement that firms contribute at least one-third of total project costs in prototype OTA agreements. This would allow for the negotiation of “voluntary cost shares.”
- Data-as-a-Service (Sec. 1832): The bill also opens the door for a data-as-a-service (DaaS) procurement model and requires the Pentagon to ensure the “negotiation of contracts for the acquisition of a weapons system considers, to the maximum extent practicable, the negotiation of data-as-a-service solutions and associated license agreements.” TL;DR: Software companies wouldn’t need to give away their IP to get a DoD contract, as software could be licensed through a sort of subscription model.
Pilot programs: The Chairman’s Mark also introduces new pilot programs, a bunch of which are innovation-focused, like:
- The Defense Industrial Resilience Consortium (IRC) “to identify opportunities to address workforce shortages in advanced manufacturing career fields in the defense industrial base.”
- A Pilot Program for Data-Enabled Fleet Maintenance, which would “use commercially available artificial intelligence technologies to improve the maintenance of ground vehicles in each military service’s inventory.”
- A requirement for a “software bill of materials for artificial intelligence,” further integrating AI and “Machine Learning Security” in the DoD.
- A “Special Operations Command Urgent Innovative Technologies and Capabilities Pilot Program” to “accelerate the research, development, testing, procurement and initial sustainment of innovative technologies and equipment that enhance operational capabilities of Special Operations Forces.”
It also makes the “Direct to Phase II authority for the Small Business Innovation Research program” permanent. Great news for all of the SBIR-lovers out there.
Tech-y Tech: There weren’t a ton of new tweaks to line items on the procurement side in Chairman’s Mark, but the bill adds $90M for a “Hybrid-Electric Propulsion flight demo” and gives a $225M boost to the Navy for subsea and seabed warfare R&D.
It also calls for a briefing next February “on the state of the domestic industrial base for small and medium-sized UAS,” encourages the DoD “to continue and expand its investment in hypersonic aircraft development,” and requests that the DoD present “a timeline for continued commercially developed autonomous ground software development and procurement,” including the “execution of available robotic combat vehicle (RCV) software pathway funding.”
If you’re a regular reader of Tectonic, you’ll know this is music to the ears of at least a few companies we’ve covered.
Wish List: Like kids who can’t wait on Christmas morning, the services and combatant commands put out their “Unfunded Priorities Lists” before Rogers even finished the Mark. These wishlists are basically an outline of how they’d spend extra funds if the good people across the Potomac chose to give them more than the DoD requested.
The Army asked for $4.3B for goodies, including:
- $581M for small drones and cUAS
- $324M for the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) line
- $300M for modernizing the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3)
- $46M to mitigate “unsteady supply chains”
On the Navy’s $7.4B wishlist was:
- $2.2B for the munitions industrial base
- $1.4B to award a contract for the embattled F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program
- $841M for a bunch of those sea-launched and air-to-air missiles that have been seeing some action recently
Last but not least, the Air Force and Space Force asked for a predictably whopping $16B, including:
- $4.15B for the production of munitions, including the AMRAAM, the recently resuscitated ARRW hypersonic missile, and the APKWS II laser-guided interceptor
- $1.98B for aircraft readiness
- $3.53B of the Space Force’s $5.98B request for the MILNET satellite constellation program, plus another $687M for Block II satellite launches
- $1.61B for some mysterious classified Space Force programs
If your eyes are glazing over from all of the acronyms and numbers, we don’t blame you. But buried in all that are some signs of change. We’ll be watching to see what survives the bill’s next steps—and, importantly, what gets booted.