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

Floor Speech

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Mr. WITTMAN. Madam Chair, I thank the chairman and ranking member of the committee for their leadership throughout this year's NDAA process.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3838, the Streamlining Procurement For Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense and Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026.

As the United States faces pacing threats from China, this NDAA ensures the United States remains peerless by reforming and modernizing the Pentagon's acquisition policies. This bill includes my provision instituting a minimum assignment period of 6 years for acquisition program executive officers, strengthening institutional memory in the acquisition process.

It also cuts through red tape by exempting smaller programs from cumbersome regulatory burdens. It revitalizes the national defense industrial base by establishing the defense industrial resiliency consortium, and it bridges the ``Valley of Death'' by creating the Bridging Operational Objectives and Support for Transition Program to efficiently align high-potential technologies with unmet operational needs.

As chairman of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, we have ensured this bill delivers on maintaining a capable and lethal fighting force by authorizing over $38 billion for the development, procurement, and modification of aircraft, including full funding for the 6th generation F-47 and F/A-XX programs. It also authorizes $15 billion to restore America's ammunition arsenal.

Crucially, this bill addresses the emerging threat of unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS. These systems are poised to be the IED of our future conflicts if we do not successfully counter them at home and on the battlefield.

The fiscal year 2026 NDAA fully funds the President's request for counter-UAS systems and implements a pilot program to utilize commercial data feeds to more accurately detect, identify, and track UAS incursions near military installations.

Madam Chair, I thank the subcommittee's ranking member, Don Norcross, for his leadership in these efforts and for his shared, bipartisan vision for our Nation's security.

Madam Chair, this year's NDAA is a strong, bipartisan bill that works to keep the United States the most dynamic and lethal military power on the planet.

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

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