Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, nominee to be the following chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited the brand new multi-year procurement authority as critical to making sure the Pentagon is capable of meet its munitions stockpile requirements.
Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee pressed Brown, the present Air Force chief of staff, on his assessment of the state of munitions industrial base during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
“Certainly one of the areas I’d highlight is that, for all of the services, on this 12 months’s budget submission we asked for multi-year procurement. And that multi-year procurement was designed to assist increase our stocks. But what it also does for us is help provide predictability to the defense industrial base, to their supply chains and to their workforce,” Brown said.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), particularly, asked Brown about how the department can best utilize multi-year procurement authority and said she is “deeply concerned” in regards to the current capability for munitions production.
“Frankly, after years of under-investing in munitions production, we now find ourselves, I believe, in a really precarious position. While this committee has generally been supportive of providing aid and transferring excess munitions from our stockpiles, we even have a transparent expectation that the department will work with us to make sure that we produce more munitions, as many as we are able to and as fast as we are able to, to backfill our stockpiles, increase our margins and support our allies and partners,” Fischer said.
The present National Defense Authorization Act included a provision allowing multi-year contracts, typically utilized for big platforms similar to ships and helicopters, to purchase select critical munitions, with the services searching for appropriators approval to pursue such plans in fiscal 12 months 2024.
The Air Force’s FY ‘24 budget request sought multi-year procurements for the Lockheed Martin [LMT] AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) and the RTX’s [RTX] AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), which Brown has previously said “is only a start” (Defense Every day, June 7).
“The multi-year procurement [request] was to be certain that we not only had the munitions that we were going to but in addition the facilities in addition to the workforce and the provision chain. That’s the worth of getting these multi-years,” Brown said on Tuesday. “It’s about constructing capability. It’s about buying down risk in the longer term.”
House appropriators, nevertheless, included an almost $2 billion cut to multi-year munitions procurement in its $826.5 billion FY ‘24 defense spending bill approved last month (Defense Every day, June 22).
“In lots of cases, reductions were made since the department did not justify the request. One example is the department’s request for economic order quantities for certain munitions tied to multi-year procurement,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chair of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said through the panel’s markup on the time. “Due to poor justification, other urgent unfunded needs, and sufficient enduring support for the munitions industrial base, the bill doesn’t fund this request.”
HAC’s bill does grant funding for five multi-year munitions procurements to incorporate Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile, Lockheed Martin’s GMLRS rocket and PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhanced interceptors in addition to the Air Force’s LRASM and JASSM, but not AMRAAM and the Navy’s request for RTX’s SM-6 missile (Defense Every day, June 23).
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) also asked Brown if he believed the war in Ukraine and supplying large numbers of munitions to help against Russia’s invasion has caused the challenges to the munitions industrial base or whether it exposed fragilities that were already in place.
Brown responded he believed it exposed existing vulnerabilities, noting discussions around munitions industrial base challenges have come up during previous situations while the conflict in Ukraine is “highlighting it much more so.”
“I believe you and the department have convinced the authorizers on this point. I believe perhaps the appropriators still need some convincing,” Cotton said after the response, in reference to Brown’s view on the importance of multi-year procurement authority.