Senate confirmation hearings are set to officially begin this week for Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. No doubt, the media and some members of the Senate will try to use this opportunity to criticize Hegseth’s personal history and lack of Pentagon experience, but this is a mistake.

Indeed, if the chaos in Kabul, wokeness and inefficiency in Washington, and the general decline of America’s military over the last four years under the leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin—a former four-star general and defense contractor board member—have taught us anything, it is that the Defense Department doesn’t need another Washington insider at the helm.

In response, conservatives should use the upcoming hearings to highlight Hegseth’s unique opportunity to deliver what the American people voted for and what the American military needs: a Pentagon that is accountable, efficient, and laser-focused on fighting and winning, especially against our number one adversary, the People’s Republic of China.

To hammer home the point, below are five essential reforms that Hegseth can implement immediately upon being confirmed.

1) Restore Accountability 

by firing longtime bureaucrats and senior military officers who have failed to focus on lethality and combat power. A good place to start would be program managers in charge of maintaining the Navy’s ships, as well as generals and admirals who wholeheartedly endorsed and promulgated DEI initiatives and leadership connected to the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the Abbey Gate bombing. 

2) Make Contracting and Management Reforms

Hegseth can expand hiring and firing authorities, update federal regulations on commercial item procurement, and cut onerous bureaucratic red tape. The Government Accountability Office (and others) have identified contracting reforms that could save billions across the federal government if the departments are directed to implement them by their new secretaries. 

3) Cut All Non-Defense Research Spending

As Hegseth has advocated for in his books and media work, the military needs to return to a focus on warfighting. The defense budget is stuffed with non-defense spending, including medical research, questionable R&D spending going to white papers at universities that do not result in programs of record, and even billions spent on turning the entire fleet of non-tactical vehicles in the U.S. Army electric. This is all waste that Hegseth can cut. The U.S. military ought to be a warfighting machine focused on being as lethal as possible to defend the national security interests of the American people.

4) Increase Procurement

The money Hegseth saves from cutting non-defense research spending can be better spent on the procurement of military capabilities—ships, planes, and munitions. This fiscal year, the size of the fleet will shrink as the Navy retires more ships than it built and cuts orders for some of the precision-guided munitions we need most to deter China in the Indo-Pacific. Hopefully, the Fiscal Year 2026 President’s Defense Budget Request will ask for far more ships and munitions than the most recent one did, sending a strong demand signal to the defense industrial base to invest in infrastructure and labor by ordering more ships and munitions than the industry is currently positioned to produce, resulting in a long-term increase in capacity. 

5) Revitalize and Reform Naval Shipbuilding. 

The shipbuilding industry is beset by problems, with shipbuilders facing constant delays and cost overruns, and the Department of Defense’s joint requirements process is hobbling the process of ship design. Something must be done to hold industry accountable for failing to deliver ships on time, and the Navy needs to be prevented from overloading new ships with onerous requirements, especially after the shipbuilders have started construction. Both the Department of the Navy and industry are at fault and in serious need of reform so that they can deliver the warships the Navy needs to deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

American conservatives, along with anyone in favor of reforming the Pentagon and revitalizing our military, should support Pete Hegseth in his endeavor to do so. To that end, the woke policies that have tarnished the reputation of our military (along with anyone who had a hand in them) need to go, the bureaucratic inertia caused by red tape and overregulation needs to be broken, and the focus of the defense budget needs to be on the procurement of the ships, planes, and munitions we need to rebuild the U.S. military into the lethal and capable fighting force the American people deserve.

Wilson Beaver is a defense policy advisor in the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation. Follow him on X: @WilsonCBeaver.

Image: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons.