WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., released his proposal to change fundamentally the way the Department of Defense (DOD) does business by getting better weapons to our troops faster and maximizing taxpayer dollars. Senator Wicker’s plan, titled “Restoring Freedom’s Forge: American Innovation Unleashed,” outlines critical reforms that DOD and Congress could enact to pull defense budgeting and acquisition into the 21^st century.

The recommendations encompass five key subject areas: cutting red tape, unleashing innovation, increasing competition, enabling decisive action, and modernizing the budget process.

The report is also accompanied by comprehensive legislation – S. 5618, the FORGED Act (Fostering Reform and Government Efficiency in Defense) – which puts many of the recommendations in the report into practice. This new proposal complements the report Senator Wicker issued earlier this year, “21^st Century Peace Through Strength: A Generational Investment in the U.S. Military.” Among many other recommendations, “Peace Through Strength” principally calls for an immediate investment in the DOD to maintain deterrence against China.

“The Department of Defense has been doing business the same way for far too long, which has heavily damaged both taxpayer confidence and American national security. We are entering a moment where major reform is possible. My legislation offers an opportunity to maximize the use of public dollars to buy second-to-none weapons systems, adopt new technology faster, and boost competition within the defense industry. I have started a national conversation about making a generational investment. Now we need to discuss how we can spend smarter,” Senator Wicker said.

Read the executive summary of “Freedom’s Forge” here. Read the full bill text of the FORGED Act here.

Listed below are some of the key recommendations of the report and legislation in each major area. Read the report in full here.

• Repeal hundreds of unnecessary provisions from Title 10 to relieve officials of busy work: remove restrictions, delegate approvals, and create a five-year sunset on reporting requirements.
• Flip the contracting paradigm to require commercial procedures making DOD a better customer: strengthen rapid acquisition pathways, make commercial contracting the default, and relieve nontraditional defense contractors of numerous non-commercial requirements.
• Dramatically accelerate qualification and test procedures to improve multiple sourcing and competition: create a program for multiple sourcing, remove barriers to reverse engineering, and streamline qualification and test procedures.
• Reduce layers of bureaucracy by integrating authorities into empowered Program Executive Officers: upgrade program executive offers to integrate requirements, funding, and acquisition, and democratize joint decision-making processes.
• Restructure the budget and enable an agile funding process to transition technologies more rapidly into production: restructure the budget, consolidate budget line items, increase reprogramming authorities, and establish funding transparency.

Senator Wicker is the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.