Fairfax, VA, June 17, 2026 – The Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting in the Costello College of Business at George Mason University (Baroni Center) today announced the publication of a new report examining how speed in federal contracting provides strategic advantages for the Pentagon and America’s warfighters.
The Power of Speed: Contracting as the Competitive Advantage, co-authored by Baroni Center Senior Fellow Stephanie Halcrow and Dr. James Hasik, Research Fellow, Stevens Institute of Technology, explores the role of speed, agility, and velocity in defense procurement.
Halcrow and Dr. Hasik analyzed historical contracting authorities and strategies used during World War II, the Cold War, the Global War on Terror, and the current war in Ukraine to determine that accelerating contracting timelines ultimately saves lives and is critical to ensuring that the U.S. remains the dominant military superpower in this new era of warfare.
Key benefits include:
- Delivering Value Sooner: In unfamiliar, emerging, or fast-changing environments, time saved in contracting can create significant strategic value. For the Pentagon, moving at the speed of future conflict requires reducing the time to contract, start work, and deliver capability in both peace and conflict.
- Reducing Overall Costs: Faster contracting lead times reduce the financial burden on suppliers, particularly small businesses, and lower the long-term costs passed on to government customers. The report finds that speed and cost should not be treated as competing priorities.
- Decreasing Development Time: Shorter contracting timelines allow organizations to begin work faster, learn from experimentation, apply lessons to future projects, and accelerate development cycles across programs.
- Advancing Technology: By starting work earlier, companies can identify opportunities sooner, mature solutions faster, and deliver results more quickly. In defense, that speed can translate into battlefield advantage, operational success, and saved lives.
“History, from World War II to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, has shown speed in contracting isn’t about efficiency in the abstract, but can be the difference between life and death on the battlefield,” said Halcrow. “Our research shows the rapid contracting efforts behind the MRAP program during the Global War on Terror helped deliver capability that saved the lives of hundreds of warfighters. The Department must keep this lesson top-of-mind in this new era of warfare, and treat speed as a national security imperative.”
Harnessing the Power of Speed: An Actionable Way Forward
The report offers several recommendations to help the Pentagon, Congress, and industry better harness speed as a competitive advantage:
- Make the decision to go fast, fast. The Department should continue to move quickly and decisively to prioritize speed in contracting in their acquisition modernization efforts, rather than allowing slow processes to remain the default or creep back into areas where recent progress has been made.
- Focus on speed, not just reform. Future statutes, policies, and acquisition strategies should explicitly prioritize speed rather than relying solely on traditional language about streamlining, efficiency, or reform.
- Prioritize collaboration and transparency over cost alone. The Pentagon and industry should strengthen trust, communication, and long-term planning to support faster, more resilient, and more innovative acquisition outcomes. Halcrow’s 2022 report, The Power of Many: Leveraging Consortia to Promote Innovation, Expand the Defense Industrial Base, and Accelerate Acquisition, previously identified how the OTA consortia model drives collaboration among government, industry, and academia to accelerate acquisition timelines.
- Leverage digital transformation to supercharge speed. Modern procurement systems should go beyond electronic signatures to include automated templates, real-time collaboration, data integration, artificial intelligence, and tools that reduce administrative burdens and shorten lead times, enabling faster contract execution.
- Invest in the current and future workforce. The Department should equip today’s contracting professionals with the training, tools, and culture needed to operate at speed, while preparing the next generation of acquisition leaders.
“The recommendations in this report are intended to move the conversation beyond acquisition reform and toward acquisition readiness,” said Dr. Hasik. “The Department does not need speed only in moments of crisis; it needs systems, policies, digital tools, industry relationships, and workforce capacity that make speed repeatable as a best practice. By choosing to go fast, prioritizing collaboration and transparency, investing in digital transformation, and preparing the contracting workforce to operate at pace, the Pentagon can make contracting speed a durable national security advantage in times of conflict and peace.”
The Power of Speed is the latest report in Halcrow’s research series that examines practical ways to enable the faster, more effective acquisition of defense technologies. The Power of Many explored how consortium-based acquisition models enable collaboration, broaden participation, and accelerate innovation. The second installment, 2025’s From Breakthroughs to the Battlefield: Best Practices for Tapping into the Power of Prototyping, identified opportunities to improve DoD prototyping outcomes. Together, the reports provide a growing body of research to help the Pentagon move faster, collaborate more effectively with industry and academia, and deliver capabilities to warfighters that provide the dominant advantage on the battlefield.
The Power of Speed Webinar
On June 23, the Baroni Center will host The Power of Speed – Contracting as the Competitive Advantage webinar, convening leaders from government, industry, and academia.
The webinar will take place from 1:00 – 2:00 PM ET and feature a panel discussion focused on the report’s examination of velocity, speed, and agility in development, procurement, and deployment systems. The discussion will also explore strategies for accelerating acquisition outcomes while maintaining accountability and mission effectiveness.
The panel features:
- Stephanie Halcrow, Senior Fellow, Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting
- John Tenaglia, Principal Director, Defense Pricing, Contracting, and Acquisition Policy, Office of the Secretary of War
- Ben Harris, Executive Director, National Armaments Consortium
- Dr. James Hasik, Research Fellow and Director of Analytics, Acquisition Innovation Research Center, Stevens Institute of Technology
To register, view the agenda, and learn more, visit https://cvent.me/e0Aoow.
About the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting
The Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting is the first-in-the-nation university center to address the business, policy, and regulatory issues in government contracting. Under the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, the Baroni Center is uniquely positioned to lead this effort by virtue of the composition of its faculty and students, as well as its geographic co-location with the federal government and many headquarters and major facilities of companies that make up the government contracting industry. Activities to implement the Center's vision focus on three lines of effort: Research; Education and Training; and Collaboration.
To learn more, visit https://business.gmu.edu/centers/center-government-contracting.