Opinion: The Defense Race Has Shifted From Scale To Speed

Wars now evolve faster than defense programs.

Leading defense companies are proving that engineering timelines can be trimmed by up to 50%. As military technology evolves at an unprecedented pace, the ability to compress engineering cycles is becoming a strategic advantage.

The war in Ukraine has shown how quickly military technology can change in combat. Software on uncrewed systems is updated in days; low-cost, attritable drones are reshaping battle-field economics; and operators continuously adapt tactics as new capabilities emerge. Yet major U.S. defense acquisition programs take nearly 12 years on average to deliver initial operational capability. The widening gap between the paces of conflict and acquisition has become a defining competitive challenge.

For decades, competitive advantage rested on industrial scale, manufacturing capacity and reliable program execution. Those capabilities remain essential, but they are no longer sufficient. Defense companies are increasingly competing on speed—how quickly they can learn, integrate new technologies and deliver usable capabilities.

Many executives attribute long development cycles to changing customer requirements, regulations or supply chain constraints. Those pressures are real. But a considerable share of the delay originates inside engineering organizations themselves. Slow decision-making, fragmented operating models and development processes designed primarily to reduce risk often slow learning and delay delivery.

The companies making the greatest progress are demonstrating that engineering speed is not simply a function of customer requirements. It is an organizational capability. By redesigning operating models, accelerating learning cycles and pushing decisions closer to technical teams, they are demonstrating that much of the industry’s chronic schedule slippage is within management’s control.

The biggest obstacles are rarely individual technical problems. Rather, delays accumulate across the engineering system. Decision-making is often pushed upward through layers of reviews and approvals because decision rights are unclear or organizations penalize mistakes more than delays. Senior technical leaders become bottlenecks for issues that should be resolved much closer to the work.

At the same time, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and program management frequently operate with different priorities, timelines and data. Manufacturing constraints surface late, supplier issues emerge after designs are largely complete, and engineers spend too much time coordinating across organizational boundaries instead of advancing technical work.

Learning cycles also remain slower than they need to be. Digital engineering has transformed product development, but virtual models still cannot fully expose integration problems, manufacturability challenges or software-hardware interactions. Organizations that rely primarily on simulation often discover critical issues only after designs have matured, when redesign becomes slower and far more expensive. The fastest organizations instead use rapid prototyping to accelerate learning throughout development.

The implications extend well beyond engineering organizations. The U.S. Defense Department plans to invest nearly $2.4 trillion in its costliest acquisition programs. And every year added to development increases cost while delaying operational capability in an increasingly dynamic threat environment.

One leading defense prime recently examined the time required to move a major program from authority to first operational trial. Without changing the platform’s technical requirements, the company identified opportunities to reduce the development timeline by roughly 50%. Many of the highest-impact improvements lay within engineering’s control.

Some were straightforward: clarifying decision rights, assigning greater subsystem accountability, accelerating hardware testing and deploying reusable software and program starter kits instead of rebuilding common capabilities for every program. Others required broader organizational changes, including collocating cross-functional teams, bringing manufacturing and supply chain expertise into development much earlier and engaging customers sooner on initial capability rather than waiting for every requirement to be finalized before starting integration and testing.

The broader lesson is that dramatic improvements do not require enterprise-wide transformation. The companies making the fastest progress typically begin with a single program, demonstrate measurable reductions in development cycle time and then scale successful practices.

None of this eliminates the complexity inherent in modern defense acquisition. Regulatory oversight, sophisticated systems integration and resilient supply chains will remain essential. But the organizations outperforming on speed are demonstrating that development timelines are far more controllable than many executives assume.

The next era of defense competition will reward companies that can compress engineering cycles without compromising mission performance. Those organizations will not only deliver capability faster—they will help redefine what customers expect from the defense industrial base.

Chris Jones is a leader in Bain & Co.’s aerospace and defense practice, and Bill Radzevych leads the firm’s product and R&D practice. Both are partners at the company.