The Department of Defense launched a team of elite private sector businessmen tasked with handling and approving defense contractor negotiations, aimed at fixing the former “broken Pentagon bureaucracy.”
Dubbed “Deal Team Six,” the crew is tasked with creating better deals with defense companies to ensure their production of U.S. military equipment is not at the expense of the taxpayer, but that of the contractor, according to a Thursday social media video posted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth claims in the video that for decades, the department allowed contractors to “double-dip” when service members needed weapons, aircraft or ships, charging the taxpayer for factory builds and again for the final product.
“Despite paying companies to make weapons faster, scheduled delays were constant and cost overruns were the norm, all while their CEOs got rich,” Hegseth says in the video.
Deal Team Six, which is folded inside the Pentagon’s Economic Defense Unit, stood up in early April after it was introduced by Hegseth in a November 2025 memorandum that referred to the unit as a way to modernize contracting and provide incentives and possible penalties to industry partners.
Hegseth has sought to revamp the defense industrial base by scrapping the Defense Acquisition System and turning it into a Warfighting Acquisition System, designated the “arsenal of freedom.” The new system is meant to speed up project timelines and increase production.
In a November 2025 speech at the National War College at Fort McNair in D.C., Hegseth announced that the department would grant larger and longer contracts to companies for systems that have shown their merit.
In exchange for the companies to foot the bill for certain items — such as expansion efforts, new factories, assembly lines and factory plants — the department will provide “steady, long-term orders” for what the service members need, Hegseth’s recent video explains.
This is meant to guarantee that these defense companies can create equipment in higher volumes faster, while keeping to a flat price. Hegseth warned in the video that if companies don’t comply, the department will simply find others who will.
“We’re not tolerating delays in production or cost overruns anymore,” Hegseth says in the video.
“We’ve pushed out the bureaucrats who have made these deals in the past and replaced them with the most talented negotiators in the private sector,” he continued.
This unit was included in fiscal year 2026’s National Defense Authorization Act and appropriated more than $266 million for research, development, test and evaluation.
Included in President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2027 $1.5 trillion defense budget, the unit is allotted over $593 million in the same type of funding section as the 2026 fiscal year.
Although the team’s entire roster has not yet been revealed, George Kollitides, the former head of defense at Cerberus Capital Management, was named its director, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.
Cristina Stassis is a reporter covering stories surrounding the defense industry, national security, military/veteran affairs and more. She previously worked as an editorial fellow for Defense News in 2024 where she assisted the newsroom in breaking news across Sightline Media Group.
