Air Force Weapons Procurement Reorg Plan Nears Completion by Year's End

The U.S. Air Force is moving closer to finalizing a sweeping reorganization of its weapons procurement structure that could reshape how the service manages billion-dollar defense programs and responds to emerging threats.

According to Air Force Lifecycle Management Center (AFLCMC) Executive Director Dennis D’Angelo, the service expects to complete plans for consolidating Program Executive Offices (PEOs) under new Program Executive Offices for Acquisition (PEAs) within weeks—a reorganization that represents part of the Pentagon’s broader initiative to realign decision-making authority higher in the chain of command.

“They’re still moving forward with the PAE concept of rolling the PEOs under the PAE structure, but they have not finalized that yet,” D’Angelo said Thursday at the Alamo ACE conference. “That probably will not be finalized for the next couple of weeks.”

The restructuring is designed to grant senior procurement leaders significantly greater authority over resource allocation, personnel deployment, and program management decisions. By concentrating decision-making power at the PAE level, the Air Force aims to accelerate responses to technological shifts, budget changes, and emerging security threats.

“One of the things leadership wanted to do is give the PAE more responsibility and authority for them to be able to accomplish their mission so they would have more authority in how they would be able to move money, move people and all that,” D’Angelo explained. “The issue is how much authority will they be given, and that’s still up for debate.”

The centrality of the reorganization to Air Force leadership is underscored by the fact that AFLCMC Commander Lt. Gen. Donna Shipton opted to skip the conference to remain engaged in structuring the reorganization effort.

Balancing Speed with Security Requirements

Simultaneously, the Air Force must navigate a more complex challenge: implementing Zero Trust cybersecurity principles across weapon systems—a mandate that differs fundamentally from applying the same framework to traditional IT infrastructure.

While the Department of Defense has set 2027 as the compliance deadline for Zero Trust implementation in IT environments, applying identical protocols to aircraft, missiles, and other operational platforms presents unique technical constraints that cannot be ignored.

“Zero Trust cannot be applied to weapon systems the same way it is applied to IT systems,” D’Angelo cautioned. The critical distinction lies in the operational nature of these systems. IT environments typically prioritize functionality and can tolerate minor delays, errors, and occasional outages. Weapon systems, by contrast, operate in real-time and must deliver deterministic behavior with predictable response times under all conditions.

“A real-time system ensures consistent operation even under extreme loads and under varied conditions,” he noted. “Every additional security control carries a performance price.”

This creates a genuine engineering challenge. A cybersecurity control that adds microseconds of latency might be acceptable in an IT context but could compromise mission effectiveness in a weapons platform where split-second timing is critical.

D’Angelo emphasized that program managers and engineers must conduct rigorous risk-and-tradeoff analysis when designing cyber resilience into weapons systems. Rather than retrofitting security measures after development, the Air Force is shifting toward embedding cyber considerations from the initial design phase.

“While speed and agility in cyber acquisition are important, they should not come at the expense of security,” D’Angelo stated, highlighting how the restructured PAE framework must provide leaders with sufficient technical expertise, authority, and flexibility to navigate these complex tradeoffs.

The reorganization thus represents not merely an administrative reshuffling but a fundamental reimagining of how the Air Force balances competing imperatives: accelerating procurement cycles, implementing robust cybersecurity standards, and maintaining the deterministic performance that modern weapons systems demand.

Source ID: SRCE-2025-1764947086260-1193