Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. BACON. Madam Chair, I thank the chairman and the ranking member of the committee for their thoughtful leadership in navigating us toward passing this bill.

Madam Chair, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3838, our National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026. The 2026 NDAA emphasizes ensuring the lethality of the U.S. Armed Forces by reforming the acquisition process to deliver innovative equipment to the warfighter at speed and scale.

It does so by accelerating the requirements process to reduce decision timelines from 3 years to 3 months, by making other transaction authorities more easily available for prototyping, and by cutting red tape through eliminating duplicative reporting requirements.

As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, I have worked tirelessly to deliver the best and most cutting-edge technology to our servicemembers.

This bill authorizes $142.6 billion for research, development, testing, and evaluation to field essential technologies, like hypersonics, AI, and autonomous vehicles, to win the wars of tomorrow.

China has a cyber force that is 10 times that of the United States. China and Russia are attacking our networks every single day. The threat in the cyberspace domain is real, and this legislation reflects that reality and takes essential steps to address it.

We could not have accomplished this without the tireless dedication and efforts of the subcommittee staff, Sarah Moxley, Caroline Kehrli, Andrew Smith, Brooke Alred, Mireya Jurado, Michael Hermann, and Wendell White.

I also thank our ranking member, Ro Khanna, for working in a bipartisan and friendly manner.

This NDAA helps small businesses by fast-tracking promising technologies, establishing a pilot program to test and procure technologies that bolster operational capabilities, and incentivizing the consideration of commercial off-the-shelf products prior to entering expensive contracts.

Madam Chair, I encourage my colleagues to support this NDAA.

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