President Donald Trump recently invoked the Defense Production Act as a means to bolster the country’s critical munitions and supply lines.
“President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to deliver munitions faster, in which he cited some of the systemic constraints in munitions industrial base that have really created some stockpile challenges,” Michael Cadenazzi, the assistant secretary of war for industrial base policy, said on Tuesday during an event with the Center for a New American Security.
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The move comes amid the U.S. war against Iran, during which the military expended thousands of munitions at a rate much faster than they can be produced, though Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has sought to downplay any concerns. At the same time, he has also talked about how the department and defense industrial base need to work together to increase their production rates drastically.
“I hereby find that conditions exist which may pose a direct threat to the national defense or its preparedness programs,” Trump said in a June 11 memorandum to Hegseth, citing “limited production capacity, fragile supply chains, long-lead dependencies, and related production bottlenecks,” according to Reuters.
“In particular, systemic constraints in the munitions industrial base, including limited production capacity, fragile supply chains, long-lead dependencies, and related production bottlenecks, may impair the ability of the United States to produce, sustain, and expand the availability of munitions, missiles, and equipment required for the national defense,” the memo said.
The Defense Production Act allows the president to take unilateral actions to bolster national defense capabilities.
Cadenazzi added, “At the end of the day, I think more than anything else, we’ve had a long-term recognition that we wanted to increase our production capacity at the factory floor. We are fully embracing that, and we’ve been doing that since long before this conflict. So, any changes that are underway predate what has been happening in the past four months.”
The secretary had begun an “Arsenal of Freedom” tour prior to the war in Iran, in which he would travel to defense manufacturing plants across the country to encourage the workers, boost morale, and explain their importance to national defense.
Hegseth, in testimony on Capitol Hill in recent months, said that it could take “months and years … depending on the weapon system,” though he also argued that “the munitions issue has been foolishly and unhelpfully overstated.”
A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies released last month said the U.S.’s “depleted inventories have created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict.”
Also on Tuesday, Lockheed Martin and GM Defense announced a new agreement to collaborate on strengthening defense supply chains, advancing manufacturing and design capabilities, and evaluating ways to expand production capacity through commercial manufacturing.
