"It's not a sudden shift, it's taken us nine months to make this work," Michael Cadenazzi said, describing how the Pentagon is using voluntary agreements under the Defense Production Act to shore up fragile supply chains.
Michael Cadenazzi outlines the Pentagon's voluntary-agreement approach
At an event Tuesday at the Center for a New American Security, Michael Cadenazzi, the Pentagon’s industrial base policy chief, described a deliberate push to use the Defense Production Act (DPA) not just as a stopgap but as an organizing framework for long-term industrial coordination. Cadenazzi said launching a "voluntary agreement" was one of his first tasks when he arrived at the Pentagon in September, and that it has taken nine months to bring the mechanism into operation.
The timing of Cadenazzi’s comments follows what the source describes as the White House’s "quiet invocation" of the DPA. The authority itself is up for reauthorization and, according to the story, expires Sept. 30.
How the voluntary agreements work and what they cover
Cadenazzi described voluntary agreements as a way to convene competing companies without triggering antitrust concerns. He framed the tool as permitting the Defense Department "to talk about different things like electronics, materials, ammonium perchlorate, rocket motors" and to "bring competing companies in to discuss needs and challenges without worrying about 'antitrust rules.'"
He elaborated that the mechanism lets the department "articulate problems to them around nasty issues in the supply chain or the industrial base" and allows companies to "communicate and work together, essentially collude, for want of a better term." That language frames voluntary agreements as a legally bounded venue for cooperation on what Cadenazzi called "the gritty underbelly of the industrial base."
Beyond high-profile components, Cadenazzi specifically said voluntary agreements could include less visible suppliers — he named tire makers as an example — and could be structured as an "enduring capability" to create a steady demand signal for producers across the defense supply chain.
Existing DPA-style arrangements and the broader toolbox
The story notes the Pentagon already uses two longstanding arrangements that rely on civil-industry capacity: the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which can call on commercial airlines and aerospace manufacturers, and the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement, which brings U.S. merchant vessels into a peacetime partnership in exchange for priority access to Defense Department cargoes.
Cadenazzi positioned the new voluntary agreements as complementary to those arrangements, expanding the topics the department can address — from electronics and rocket motors to more mundane but critical items like tires.
Office of Naval Research: a strategy for faster tech transitions to the fleet
At Defense One’s annual Tech Summit, Rachel Riley, head of naval research, said the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is finalizing a strategy meant to speed new technology into the fleet. The plan will "spell out what the service wants and highlight key areas of scientific interest," and Riley singled out one human controlling a swarm of drones as a priority research area.
Riley warned that the public image of a single joystick commanding 100 drones understates the technical challenge: "That is a lot harder than people realize because people think, oh, you have one joystick and 100 drones are moving. Well, in practice, that looks like little kids playing soccer…And that's not good enough for our American warfighters," she said. She called out next-generation algorithms, cross-domain command-and-control (air, sea and subsea), and the need for sensors and effectors that are "scalable, feasible at the edge with the right number of compute [that can] fit on a relatively small platform."
Riley also said ONR is "thinking about how can we generate new sensors and effectors" and is tapping academic research on insect swarming to build mathematical models that may inform maritime drone coordination.
Other Tech Summit notes, program moves, and organizational changes
- INDOPACOM changed its name back to U.S. Pacific Command, the brief reports.
- Govini has rebranded as Air.
- The Army direct-commissioned three more tech executives and reportedly bought thousands of IVAS headsets it does not plan to use.
- Regent’s defense division marked its first anniversary as the company finishes a 255,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, for its seaglider work.
- The Defense Innovation Unit awarded drone maker Mach Industries a contract for its Runway Independent Maritime Expeditionary Strike (RIMES) program.
- Summit participants included Maj. Gen. Dominique Luzeaux, Rear Adm. Michael Baker, and panels featuring Brandon Tseng (Shield AI), Eric Brock (Ondas), Gregory Coleman (5Side Strategy), Veronica Daigle (Red Cell Partners), Jerry McGinn (CSIS), and Kedar Pavgi (DIU).
How Navy technologists, Pentagon procurement leaders, and defense suppliers are responding
- Navy technologists and researchers: ONR’s strategy and Riley’s emphasis on scalable, edge-capable sensors and biologically inspired swarm algorithms signal that researchers will prioritize integrated, cross-domain command-and-control and tighter hardware-software co-design for small platforms.
- Pentagon procurement leaders: Cadenazzi’s voluntary-agreement approach gives procurement officials a formal mechanism to convene suppliers and shape demand signals — including for low-visibility items like tires — while remaining inside a legal framework that addresses antitrust concerns.
- Defense suppliers, from rocket-motor makers to tire plants: The voluntary agreements represent both an opportunity to coordinate on shared supply-chain fixes and a potential expectation of longer-term, steadier demand if the agreements are set up as "enduring capabilities."
The Pentagon is scaling a quietly ambitious experiment: use DPA authorities to create recurring, legally bounded forums where competitors can coordinate to repair fragile supply chains and signal future demand. With the DPA itself set to expire Sept. 30, the next practical question is whether Congress will reauthorize the authority that underpins those voluntary agreements — and whether the department can translate nine months of setup into durable industrial resilience.
