The Secretary of the Navy inaugurated a new naval office aimed at expediting the research, development, production, and deployment of new weapons systems and ships, declaring that “we need speed” and calling for a “wartime footing” as the challenges posed by China looms in the Pacific.

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan held an event on Tuesday announcing the formal opening of the new Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), telling hundreds of defense industry officials gathered in the Navy Yard in the nation’s capital that “the question before us is whether we possess the institutional velocity to meet this moment” as he called for faster weapons production and quicker shipbuilding in the face of threats in the Indo-Pacific.

The Pentagon under War Secretary Pete Hegseth is focused on deterring China and strengthening America’s position in the Pacific, and it is working to rejuvenate a sclerotic U.S. defense sector, which it says cannot currently produce the number of munitions and ships that may be needed in a potential conflict with the Chinese.

The need for speed

Phelan, a successful businessman prior to leading the Navy starting in March, told the crowd of defense contractors that the RCO, which he created in an August memo, was aimed at “speed” as he referenced U.S. shipbuilding and weapons manufacturing during World War Two, remarking that “industrial velocity is strategic advantage.”

Phelan followed up his remarks with a discussion with Admiral Seiko Okano, who is now leading the RCO, and with Dr. Rachel Riley, a DOGE alum who is now Chief of the Office of Naval Research.

President Donald Trump has issued numerous executive orders aimed at fixing the flawed defense industrial base (DIB), and Hegseth recently announced a new acquisitions strategy aimed at revitalizing the DIB, but for now the U.S. faces strains on its stockpiles of missiles and is significantly overmatched by China in terms of how many ships each nation can build.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released on Thursday, said deterring China was key.

"A favorable conventional military balance remains an essential component of strategic competition. There is, rightly, much focus on Taiwan, partly because of Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters. Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy,” the new strategy document declared. “Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.”

Achieving this goal will likely require producing far more munitions and ships than the U.S. currently churns out.

“The Rapid Capabilities Office exists to remove barriers and deliver solutions at the pace warfighting demands,” Phelan also said in a statement this week. “We are calling on America’s innovators and investors to join us. Together, we will strengthen maritime deterrence and ensure the Navy and Marine Corps maintain the advantage in every domain.”

Navy office focused on “rapid” weapons development and deployment

Phelan announced in his August memo that “the NRCO will serve as the single accountable organization spanning all naval warfare domains, responsible for the rapid assessment, execution, fielding and transition of urgent solutions within a three-year timeframe to ensure U.S. maritime supremacy.”

The memo aimed to carry out Trump’s April executive order titled “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base.” Trump declared then that “it is the policy of the United States Government to accelerate defense procurement and revitalize the defense industrial base to restore peace through strength.” 

Phelan’s memo also said the RCO would consolidate and absorb the Navy’s Maritime Accelerated Response Capability Cell, its Disruptive Capabilities Office, NavalX, and the Navy’s piece of the War Department’s broader Replicator actions, as the RCO becomes the central hub of the Navy’s efforts in this regard.

Phelan seeks to rally defense industry leaders with promises of speed

Phelan told the defense industry leaders on Tuesday that “the most consequential investment opportunity in American national security is sitting right in front of all of us today.”

He promised “speed” for weapons development and deployment, promising “contracts measured in weeks, not years” and arguing that “we are compressing decision cycles from years to weeks.”

The Navy leader argued that the ten-year window for weapons development is no longer acceptable, noting that weapons systems can take ten years from “concept to “capability” and calling that evaluation unacceptable. He said that “the question before us is whether we possess the institutional velocity to meet this moment.” 

Phelan referred to the Pentagon’s slow bureaucracy as “the Pentagon’s Valley of Death” and “Purgatory” as he argued that was going to change — and that it needed to change, given the threats facing the U.S.

“Our department faces challenges in contested logistics across the Pacific’s distances” as well as a host of other problems such as electromagnetic warfare, autonomous drones, and AI,” Phelan said. “Adopting the lessons from Ukraine, although different from a conflict in the Pacific, is critical to the future of the force.”

He added: “The business of the Navy is warfare. We need to act like we’re at war. We should behave this way when it comes to procurement timelines, maintenance schedules, industrial base resilience, and anything that touches readiness should be at a wartime footing.”

“Our adversaries vote for speed,” Phelan said. “The character of warfare is evolving. We must evolve faster.”

Phelan repeated that his emphasis was on speed, including those matters related to shipbuilding, saying that “we need to get this out and done and get hulls in the water.” He later added: “Ships are not built very fast. Hopefully we’ll get a little faster.”

Hung Cao, the Undersecretary of the Navy, told Just the News “yes” last week when asked about there being a shipbuilding crisis in the U.S.

“Shipbuilding is very important to the President of the United States,” Cao said, adding that Phelan is “very hyper-focused on shipbuilding.”

Faster acquisition of weaponry

Hegseth recently announced the creation of Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs) to speed up the acquiring of weaponry, and Admiral Okano said Tuesday that the entire organizing principle of the PAEs is speed.” She said that the RCO is focused first on “PAE RAS” — Robotic Autonomous Systems.

Andrew Magliochetti, another Navy official assisting with the RCO effort, told the defense industry officials on Tuesday that “the key here is speed” and promised that “we are not recreating a traditional program here under traditional timelines.”

China threat looms large for new naval office

“Yes,” Okano told Just the News when asked if the China challenge was driving the RCO’s sense of urgency. “I will say that Indo-Pacom is our focus, but we’re not going to just only be only Indo-Pacom, we’re going to be for everyone, but Indo-Pacom is going to be a priority.”

Okano also said “yes” when asked if the Indo-Pacific was still the priority theater for the Navy.

The admiral said that the main goal of the RCO was to “deter war” and said that could be accomplished by “creating dilemmas” for U.S. adversaries.

On the issue of U.S. shipbuilding facing challenges compared to the scale of Chinese shipbuilding efforts, the admiral said, “I do think that we’re looking at mass. One of the things that RCO is investing in is low-cost munitions. We have exquisite munitions, and we need volume, which is really in the form of these low-cost munitions. So I think you’re going to see us attack this from all angles.”

“I think we’re trying to build lethal ships, so that in that conflict we can go fight and win,” Okano also said.

On the munitions front, the admiral said that “I think it’s not affordable” to rely solely on expensive and exquisite munitions. “We’re going to need that exquisite tech, but can we complement it with something that can go out at scale and at mass and be a complement to it.”

The admiral also said that the question “is China deterred?” is “the benchmark” for success.

Dr. Riley told Just the News that “the tyranny of distance” in the Pacific was a challenge. She also said that U.S. sailors and soldiers demanded more speed from the U.S. military.

“I think our warfighters expectations are higher today, and they should be,” Riley said. “Folks are used to receiving a new cell phone every year, their packages in only a number of days, and so the idea of multi-year, multi-decade development just doesn’t meet their expectations.” 

Navy official Jim Juster, who also spoke at the RCO event on Tuesday, spent much of his remarks in front of a gigantic slide featuring a large map of the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, depicting China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia — a region where China has made aggressive sea claims, is challenging U.S. dominance, and may be preparing for an invasion of Taiwan.

Juster stressed that “the contested environment is a real thing to think about” as he stressed the importance of the new RCO.

"Exquisite" weapons in balance with capacity

The Navy official said that recent conflicts had taught the Navy that “asymmetric capabilities are capital asset killers” — meaning that unconventional tools such as cyberattacks, guerrilla tactics, or drone warfare posed significant threats to things like large bases and ships. He called this a “sharp sword that cuts both ways” and stressed it both needed to be taken advantage of and defended against.

Juster said that “it is awesome to have exquisite weapons” but that “it is hard to have enough of them” — a reference to the fact that the U.S. has incredibly advanced weapons systems but currently faces real challenges in manufacturing enough of them to meet the demand.

He said the Navy was looking for weapons and systems which could help the U.S. evade detection and which could defeat an adversary’s efforts to do the same, calling it a “Spy vs. Spy thing.” He said the goal was “defeating platforms and defeating weapons.”

Juster also stressed the importance of artificial intelligence, saying that “operational planning gets easier” with AI, with “operators relying not on a series of text messages and sticky notes but a live telemetry feed.”

He told the assembled defense industry representatives that “this is an awesome adventure we’re on.”

Deterring war and achieving maritime dominance

The U.S. military’s air campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen, the U.S.’s years-long effort to supply a massive number of armaments to Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders, and U.S. assistance in the defense of Israel against Iranian missile barrages have all eaten into the U.S. weapon supply. In addition, Taiwan is facing a possible invasion by the Chinese, with the potential that the U.S. would get involved in defending the island nation against a near-peer and nuclear-armed adversary.

It remains unclear whether the defense industrial base would be able to manufacture the number of weapons and ships needed to sustain a long-term engagement against the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese navy.

Just the News previously reported about a late June closed-door meeting that Hegseth held with some of the leaders of America’s largest military contractors, urging them to ramp up the production of critically needed munitions amidst depleted weapons stocks and a growing threat from China. Just the News also reported last week about efforts by key Pentagon officials to deter China and spur the revitalization of the defense industrial base.

Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, has been warning for months about the shortage of munitions in his theater amidst an unprecedented Chinese military buildup.

Phelan: "Zero caskets with an American flag on them"

Phelan said Tuesday that the implementation of the RCO “is guided by President Trump’s commitment to restore America’s maritime dominance.”

The Navy leader said his ultimate goal was deterring war and preserving American lives.

“It’s not realistic, but what it is, is zero caskets with an American flag on them,” Phelan said of his aims. “And that’s honestly what our objective and goal should be. What that ultimately means is that we don’t get in a fight, and we deter people from that fight — because they know it’s not going to turn out well for them.”