The Department of War Directory

Posted on December 16, 2025 by steve blank

TL;DR DoW Directory revision 3 is Online here, Order a print copy here.

In November 2025 the Department of War (DoW) unveiled the biggest changes in 60 years of how they will buy weapons and services. This month Congress, with bipartisan support, rapidly made them into law in the National Defense Authorization Act (the NDAA) – 3,096 pages of legislative text and 636-page Joint Explanatory Statement.

This is a top-to-bottom transformation of how the DoW plans and buys weapons, moving from contracts that prioritized process and how much a weapon costs, to how fast it can be delivered. It’s the Lean Startup plan for the Department of War.

Instead of buying custom-designed weapons, the DoW will prioritize a “commercial first” strategy – buying off-the-shelf things that already exist and using fast-track acquisition processes, rather than the cumbersome existing Federal Acquisition Regulations. To manage all of this, they are reorganizing the entire Acquisition ecosystem across the Services.

**December 2025 Directory Update – Now Available Online and in Print **Our December 2025 update to the Directory (Online here, Print copy here) describes the New Warfighting Acquisition Organizations – The Portfolio Acquisition Executive and the Capability Program Managers.

If you’re a startup trying to sell to the DoW, until now the biggest barrier has been a lack of information. That changes with this 3rd edition of the 2025 DoW Directory.

Online here, Order a print copy here.

Filed under: Air Force, Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, National Security, Navy |