OPINION — “We are in one of the most dangerous periods since World War II right now. That is one reason that a bill like this [$95 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan] should unify us. Another is that our industrial base in the United States has dramatically withered, particularly in its ability to protect us. What do I mean by ‘protect us’ — to produce weapons systems, to produce ammunition. Again, this is a fact, if you don’t believe that, well, maybe you should do a little more research. Our industrial base is withering. It is a shadow of its former self during the Cold War, certainly, during previous wars.”
That was Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, speaking on the Senate floor last Friday, during the unusual weekend debate over the National Security Supplemental that passed the Senate early this morning.
As Sullivan noted, the floor debate in part, highlighted the decline in the U.S. industrial munitions base able to produce conventional weapons, such as 155-millimeter artillery shells, as shown when this nation had to switch to providing Ukraine with cluster munitions rather than 155mm shells in order to maintain readiness requirements of U.S. forces.
But, as I describe below, the Senate debate has also raised other national security issues that need discussion such as a lack of understanding over what is in the bill and a growing Republican drift toward isolationism.
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First, however, there is this rising concern about the U.S. industrial base which initially caught my interest in a report, released last Tuesday, by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. A bipartisan Tiger Team of that committee, headed by its chairman, Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R-Texas), reported on what it called “the decline of American manufacturing and shortfalls in the U.S. defense industrial base.”
The Tiger Team found, “While Ukraine uses between 80,000-240,000 155mm artillery rounds per month, current U.S. monthly production is about 28,000. After nearly two years of war, U.S. support for Ukraine – though vital to national security – has strained American stockpiles.”
As a result, the U.S. had to reach into its own reserves to transfer more than $46 billion worth of arms from the United States to Kyiv. The House committee’s Tiger Team then reported, “In July 2023, the U.S. announced that because it was low on 155mm shells, it would be forced to send Ukraine cluster munitions instead. More orders for 155mm shells, like those of other munitions and weapons systems, have gone unfulfilled.”
I then found background to the problem in an Army Science Board study, released in September 2023, entitled Surge Capacity in the Defense Munitions Industrial Base. It found, “a decline in general capacity over the past thirty years. Over fifty mergers and acquisitions within the DMIB (Defense Munitions Industrial Base) have left five primes in control of the market, while inconsistent funding has discouraged industry investments. Twenty years of fighting low intensity [counterterrorism] conflicts have eroded inventories and provided false confidence in the ability of industry to meet production needs.”
For example, in 2010, there were Army budget cuts and because munitions expenditure rates in Iraq and Afghanistan showed that large quantities of 155mm artillery shells were not required, ammunition production was reduced. “With few and inconsistent Defense Department orders, the DMIB has little incentive to invest in itself or to innovate without government direction and resources,” the Science Board study said.
However, last year when shortages began to appear, the Army started a 15-year modernization plan for aging munitions facilities by allocating $500 million in 2023 funds and projecting another $2.5 billion for the fiscal years 2024-to-2028 period.
The Science Board study said, “Challenges remain, including over one hundred single points of failure throughout the supply chain, continued reliance on foreign sources of key raw materials, [and] failure to address future needs.”
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Among future needs, according to the Science Board, “The assumption that if China continues along an aggressive path in the Western Pacific, the U.S. may face some level of conflict by 2027. In that case, the Army will need to be ready by 2025, necessitating program planning now.”
Behind that conclusion the Science Board said was “U.S. support of Ukraine and recent war games on China’s invasion of Taiwan show that munitions stockpiles and DMIB capacity are inadequate to meet demand. China-specific classified and unclassified war games found that stocks of precision and standoff weapons were expended in as little as a few days.”
Included in the Army’s munitions production modernization are not just 155 mm shells. The plan calls for increasing Stinger surface-to-air missiles, Javelin anti-tanks weapons, HIMARS multi-launch rockets, and GMLRS, guided multiple-launched rockets.
Last Wednesday, at a meeting at the government’s Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, with some 200 industry partners attending, the Army representatives said the goal is to produce 100,000 155mm artillery projectiles per month by 2025. Current production, the Army said, was 30,000 155mm rounds per month, up 2,000 monthly from the House Tiger Team number and more than double the output of 14,000 rounds prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Maj. Gen. John T. Reim, the Army’s Joint Program Executive Officer Armaments and Ammunition, thanked industry members for helping support a $2.8 billion investment in the munitions industrial base during fiscal 2023, but said work to modernize and strengthen it is far from over.
Now let’s take a closer look at the contents of the legislation on the Senate floor which generally is described as providing $95 billion in emergency spending for military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, broke it down this way in a floor speech last Friday.
“First,” she said, “$35 billion would go to restoring U.S. military readiness. This includes $26 billion to replenish Defense Department stockpiles with new, and in many cases, upgraded weapons and equipment; $5.4 billion to increase production capacity for artillery, air defense, and long-range precision missiles; and $3.3 billion to enhance the U.S. submarine industrial base in support of our trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom and Australia, known as AUKUS.”
Collins explained that the U.S. transfers to Ukraine of weapons and equipment from military stockpiles and uses the above funds to replace the U.S. stockpile with new items. She continued that another $15.4 billion would help Ukraine purchase weapons from the U.S. industry; $11.3 billion would support American troops already in Europe, principally helping our allies equip and train Ukrainian forces; and finally, $9.4 billion for economic assistance to help Ukraine rebuild its economy.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate Minority Leader and a strong supporter of the legislation, on Friday provided another, old-fashioned reason for Republicans to vote for the bill – one I heard used in Congress during the Cold War — by pointing out that “$19.85 billion of it will be spent right here in America on replenishing our own arsenal,” as will the $15.4 billion worth of weapons that Ukraine will buy from U.S. manufacturers.
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McConnell, then added, “The investments this legislation makes in expanding production capacity — from artillery rounds to rocket motors, to submarines — are investments in readiness for long-term competition with China, a competition America cannot afford to lose. Every single one of us knows what is at stake here, and it is time for every one of us to deal with it head-on.”
During Sunday’s Senate debate, Collins made another point not widely acknowledged in the U.S. – that other nations are in some cases providing proportionately, based on their economies, as much or more than the U.S. to Ukraine.
“In terms of security assistance provided to Ukraine as a percentage of GDP–the only fair way to measure it,” Collins said, “the United States ranks 15th [in giving]. Estonia ranks No. 1. Estonia has the same population as the State of Maine–1.3 million people. Yet it has provided 10 times as much, as a percentage of its GDP, as our country has to help the Ukrainians.
Collins also noted that the European Council unanimously approved a four-year economic assistance package for Ukraine worth $54 billion in addition to approximately $63 billion in non-security assistance that other countries, not including the U.S., have already provided.
On Sunday, in the wake of Donald Trump’s threatening language directed to NATO allies, McConnell in the floor debate spoke of how it’s “become quite fashionable in some circles to disregard the global interests we have as a global power, to bemoan the responsibilities of global leadership, to lament the commitment that has underpinned the longest drought of great power conflict in human history. This is idle work for idle minds, and it has no place in the U.S. Senate…And, today, the questions facing this body are quite simple. Will we give those who wish us harm, more reason to question our resolve? Or will we recommit to exercising American strength?”
The Republican Senate Majority Leader made points worth remembering.
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