OMAHA, Neb. - Vice Adm. Douglas Williams, director of Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) Strategic Systems Programs (SSP), provided insight into supercharging the Navy’s strategic weapons systems (SWS) defense industrial base at the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) Deterrence Symposium on Aug. 6, 2026, in Omaha, Nebraska.
Delivering a call to action to industry partners, Williams straightforwardly addressed the need for a national mobilization of the defense industrial base.
“Supercharging the industrial base is something that keeps me up at night,” Williams said. “We have to develop a new missile system, and that massive industrial base for all of those commodities to be integrated down to that lowest widget, has to come into production ... those muscles have not been exercised in a long time.”
Williams keyed in on two pillars of effort related to the defense industrial base: building a resilient workforce for today’s mission and enacting meaningful acquisition reform.
PAE SSP’s workforce has grown rapidly since 2022 and will continue to grow in order to meet future program needs. Williams was emphatic that industry must treat hiring as a non-negotiable, and that industry mission support will not be the cause of schedule slips within PAE SSP’s programs.
“We have to break the bureaucracy,” Williams said. “We can’t let paperwork slow us down.”
PAE SSP’s workforce began utilizing data-driven analysis to inform hiring plans in 2022 and has seen a return on that investment over the past four years.
Williams acknowledged the challenges that PAE SSP continues to work through with the defense industrial base. He emphasized the need to hold industry to the standards set by the secretary of war while leaning into PAE SSP’s historical role as a DRPM, and taking advantage of new resources provided by the command’s designation as a PAE earlier this year.
PAE SSP is seeing positive movement within the enterprise as a result of the revolutionary change within the acquisition community supercharged by the PAE and DRPM structure. The Office of the secretary of war’s (OSW) Acquisition Transformation Strategy has given PAE SSP additional resources to utilize in contracting and research and development efforts, such as the increased use of Other Transaction Authorities (OTA) to accelerate contracting and bring non-traditional partners into the enterprise where appropriate. By using these unique contracting authorities, PAE SSP is increasing flexibility and streamlining contracting processes across programs.
"You have to get out of the starting blocks in a timely fashion," Williams said, emphasizing how the PAE and DRPM designations give programs the flexibility to move fast and execute contracts with urgency.
“We can’t rely on the timelines of the past,” Williams said. “In today’s acquisition reform environment, I am measuring my contracting officers based on their speed.”
Williams firmly pointed out that it is leadership’s responsibility, whether at the government or industry level, to hold its programs, and themselves, to that standard.
“That’s the behavior that must be embraced at the leadership level, and it must be put into tangible tactical metrics,” he said.
Williams projected confidence in the industrial base's ability and willingness to lean in. Partners across PAE SSP’s industrial base have invested in new facilities and infrastructure to support the modernization of the next generation Trident II D5 Life Extension 2 (D5LE2) weapon system, as well as the Navy’s regional deterrence programs, nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) and the non-nuclear Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic program (CPS).
Williams agreed with his fellow panelists that, while the defense industrial base faces an uphill climb to meet the needs of the country’s strategic deterrence requirements, there is no better example of American industrial might, ingenuity and patriotism than the men and women of industry who support the warfighter across the nation.
“It is a privilege to work our program,” Williams said. “Our industry partners have shown that they will always do what is right by us. That is the power of an industrial base that is centered around deterrence.”
Williams was joined on the panel by Gen. Dale White, direct reporting program manager of Critical Major Weapons Systems; Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher, director of submarine programs; Dr. Brad Wallin, deputy director of Lawrence Livermore National Lab; and Johnathon Caldwell, vice president of strategic and missiles defense systems at Lockheed Martin.
Since its inception in 1955, PAE SSP has operated with the unique agility of a DRPM, enabling the command to rapidly deliver and sustain the nation’s sea-based deterrent capabilities. Today, PAE SSP is responsible for sustaining the strategic weapon system on the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) and supporting the integration of the D5LE weapon system on the new Columbia-class SSBNs. Looking to the future, PAE SSP is actively modernizing the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad through the development of the D5LE2 SWS and pioneering regional strike capabilities of the future through development of SLCM-N and the non-nuclear hypersonic CPS system.