Michael P. Duffey was sworn in today as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment following a swift Senate confirmation that places him in charge of the Defense Department's vast procurement, sustainment and industrial base enterprise.
After Duffey received Senate confirmation yesterday, Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg administered the oath of office during a brief Pentagon ceremony.
Duffey now oversees more than $300 billion in annual procurements and policies related to contracting, logistics, installations, energy resilience and the nuclear enterprise. He also leads an acquisition workforce of roughly 190,000 civilian and military professionals.
In a statement released after the ceremony, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Duffey "a proven reformer who knows how to translate strategy into the tools our forces need in the field."
Although Duffey limited today's remarks to thanking family and colleagues, he outlined his priorities during a March 27, 2025, Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
"America's ability to protect our interests requires a military force structure with the capability and capacity to deter and, if necessary, to defeat our adversaries," Duffey told lawmakers.
He also emphasized the need to modernize "how the department integrates requirements, budgeting and acquisition processes — aligning incentives to deliver results."
Duffey said future wars may hinge as much on industrial production as battlefield performance.
"Future conflicts will be won on the factory floor as much as on the field of battle," he said, warning that the side able to replace lost equipment fastest will hold the upper hand.
He said the United States must "outpace our adversaries in our ability to supply the joint force with decisive advantage while building an industrial base agile enough to replenish those forces as needed."
Among his first tasks, Duffey plans to better align service requirements with congressional resources, expand rapid-fielding pathways for emerging technologies and apply data-driven metrics to keep programs on budget and schedule.
He also pledged a comprehensive review of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 framework, aiming to balance security needs with regulatory burdens — particularly for small businesses.
Duffey brings two decades of experience in the Pentagon and White House. Inside the department, he served as the deputy chief of staff to the defense secretary and chief of staff to the undersecretary for research and engineering, among other senior positions. Outside the building, he guided national security budgets as associate director at the Office of Management and Budget, giving him what colleagues describe as "a 360-degree view" of the policy-to-production pipeline.
A native of Wisconsin, Duffey is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and holds executive certificates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
In the weeks ahead, Duffey plans to tour depots, shipyards and suppliers to assess production bottlenecks and meet with service acquisition executives to discuss modernization priorities.
He will also chair the Nuclear Weapons Council, linking strategic-deterrent recapitalization to its broader acquisition agenda.
"Our charge," he told senators, "is to convert American ingenuity into ready combat power at a pace that preserves the nation's decisive edge."