Disinterment of Remains of Fernando V. Cota From Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, Texas

Floor Speech

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

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

This NDAA emphasizes ensuring the lethality of the U.S. armed services 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 cost reporting requirements.

As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, we have worked tirelessly to deliver the best and most cutting-edge technology to our servicemembers. To that end, 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 day. The threat in the cyberspace domain is real, and this legislation reflects that reality and takes essential steps to address it.

I thank the outstanding subcommittee staff that made this possible: Sarah Moxley, Caroline Kehrli, Andrew Smith, Brooke Alred, Mireya Jurado, Michael Hermann, and Wendell White.

Specifically, this NDAA helps small businesses by fast-tracking promising technologies, establishing a pilot program to test and procure technologies that bolster operational capabilities, incentivizing the consideration of commercial, off-the-shelf products prior to entering expensive contracts, and authorizing the Defense Innovation Unit to develop regional outreach centers.

The fiscal year 2026 NDAA is a strong bill that prioritizes our national security through commonsense acquisition reform and innovation at scale. I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.

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