America’s Arsenal of Freedom Requires Speed, Scale, and Results: How BlackSea’s GARC Proves the Model

By Chris Devine, CEO, BlackSea Technologies

When U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke at the National War College on 7 November, his message was unmistakable: America’s most immediate threat isn’t China or Russia … it’s our own bureaucracy.

Echoing Donald Rumsfeld’s prescient warning from September 10, 2001, Hegseth reminded us that process has overtaken purpose inside the Pentagon. Our acquisition system rewards delay, punishes risk, and sacrifices combat power for compliance. The Secretary’s new “Arsenal of Freedom” agenda is a hard reset for how America designs, buys, and fields its weapons.

There is proof that the reset is achievable if you know where to look.

At BlackSea Technologies, the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft (GARC) stands as evidence that this new model works. In partnership with the Navy’s PMS 420, BlackSea built and delivered over 300 GARCs in 15 months (SPEED and SCALE). Nearly to the day the last boat was delivered, GARC demonstrated the fully autonomous intercept mission for which it was designed: hands free, no joystick, no human input. In the open ocean, multiple GARCs autonomously searched for, acquired, prosecuted and intercepted at speed a moving vessel using onboard navigation, perception and mission autonomy software (RESULTS). This is exactly what the Secretary is simply and explicitly demanding of industry: speed, scale, results.

GARCs recently demonstrated performance is about more than the platform; it’s about the mindset behind it. GARC was developed outside the usual JCIDS maze and program office churn. It was co-designed with operators, prototyped alongside sailors, and validated at sea – not in PowerPoint. That approach delivered capability years faster than the traditional process ever could have.

Hegseth’s reforms demand we codify the approach that small, agile firms like BlackSea have already proven. Cancel the old playbook; we know it doesn’t work. Replace committee consensus with empowered portfolio leaders; they already know what we need. Reward those who focus 100% on delivering capability to the fleet.

The Secretary’s newly announced structures – the Requirements and Resourcing Alignment Board, Mission Engineering and Integration Activity, and Joint Acceleration Reserve – mirror the very ecosystem that allowed GARC to thrive; early collaboration, rapid funding, relentless innovation, and an uncompromising demand for results. When combined with a “commercial first” policy and portfolio-level accountability, this is how the arsenal of democracy gets rebuilt for the 21st century.

The larger point here is actually cultural. America’s defense industry must once again think and behave like a warfighter, not a contractor. Hegseth’s speech wasn’t anti-industry – it was pro-performance. He’s challenging companies to move faster, take smart risks, and compete to deliver – not compete to comply. Importantly, he is also committing to us that the DoW will meet us there as a partner.

At BlackSea, we believe the next arsenal of freedom will be defined not by quantity of contracts but by quality of output: systems that learn, scale, and fight autonomously across the world’s oceans. GARC is not an experiment in autonomy; it’s a clear signal that the future fleet is already forming in America’s small shipyards and innovative labs and being validated on the open ocean.

If we align policy with performance, as Hegseth demands, the United States can outbuild, outthink, and outfield any rival. It begins today with breaking the tyranny of process.

The Arsenal of Freedom is not a slogan – it’s an imperative that we move faster than we have in decades because our national security hangs in the balance. The only metric that matters is the speed at which we get world-beating capability to the warfighter. Period.