Over the course of the Biden administration, adversaries such as China and Russia capitalized on weak U.S. leadership and caught more than a few marches on the US military in several aspects. China focused on growing its navy, Russia made advances in drone technology, and Iran has continued to expand its missile program.
If the current environment continues, we will find ourselves outmatched in a near-peer conflict, supported by an overwhelmed domestic industrial base that cannot scale up production in the necessary time.
President Donald Trump’s recently confirmed secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has made clear he wants to reverse these trends. Congress must work with him to break the paradigm under which the Department of Defense has acted in recent decades. Together, we must find real solutions to reinvigorate America’s defense industrial base.
For nearly three decades we have too often placed compliance ahead of innovation and lethality. As a result, the U.S. defense industry is now in a state where it lacks the tools to quickly ramp up production. The war in Ukraine has provided many valuable lessons for the U.S. military from a tactical and operational standpoint, as this is the first modern war involving a great power since the start of the Iraq War in 2003.
Perhaps the most glaring example involves the United States’s capacity to produce 155 mm artillery rounds. Last year alone, Ukraine fired approximately 1.3 million rounds of 155 mm, which is over 100,000 rounds per month. Prior to the start of the war, the U.S. was producing roughly 15,000 rounds per month and now has a stated goal of reaching 100,000 per month by the end of 2025. The number of rounds Ukraine has fired throughout the more than 1,000-day war is staggering, and it gives our defense establishment a glimpse at what is required to fight a prolonged conflict on the battlefield of today.
Whether one supports sending military aid to Ukraine is irrelevant. The conflict has laid bare the stark reality that, after nearly three years of conflict, America’s defense industrial base still cannot meet the expenditure rate for Ukraine and therefore would be unable to do so in a similar, sustained fight.
The first step Congress and the DOD can take is to reduce the time required to complete contracts between the government and private industry. However, the U.S. military cannot simply stockpile tens of millions of rounds due to the simple reality that ammunition has a finite shelf life.
The U.S. can also incentivize private industry to create manufacturing plants that can pivot and produce different types of munitions. In an environment where the character of war seemingly changes every two months, we need dynamic industry partners that can meet the evolving demands for production.
Perhaps the greatest factor in addressing issues with our industrial base is leadership at the DOD. In fact, there’s recent history of a secretary of defense identifying a need and leveraging his influence to address the needs of the American warfighter, at scale. In 2007, then-defense secretary Robert Gates challenged the risk-averse status quo and broke through the bureaucratic red tape by pushing industry to deliver nearly 30,000 roadside bomb-resistant vehicles in less than a year. This no doubt saved the lives of innumerable U.S. service members and represents the sort of disruptive, yet visionary, leadership the U.S. military needs to succeed.
In this era of high-level deficit spending the DOD and Congress need to focus on delivering programs and weapons systems that are relevant, and that we can afford to own and operate. The war in Ukraine has shown, for example, that commercial, off-the-shelf drones are more effective and cheaper than the larger and more expensive drones that our military relied upon so heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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While these platforms once served a purpose, they are expensive to maintain and, quite frankly, irrelevant in an era where warfare dictates an infantry platoon be outfitted with multiple modern drones. Simply put, we must support Trump and Hegseth’s efforts to increase defense spending while also reallocating misplaced funds within the DOD.
I’m confident Congress can work with Hegseth and a new round of DOD leaders to save billions in taxpayer dollars while simultaneously making our formations more lethal with new and more cost-effective commercial equipment. A healthy relationship between Congress and the DOD with a focus on restoring the Defense Industrial Base is essential to deter adversaries who have only grown further emboldened over the past four years.
Congressman Pat Fallon represents Texas’s 4th Congressional District. An Air Force veteran, he is a member of the House Armed Services, Intelligence, and Oversight and Accountability committees.