WASHINGTON – As defense manufacturers struggle to keep up with the Pentagon’s needs and the threat from China grows, the chairman of a key House subcommittee told industry leaders on Wednesday to shift away from current peacetime production rates and pursue “warfare.”
“In my opinion, we are not moving to prevent a war in the Pacific,” said Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation subcommittee chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.). “We haven’t moved to the maximum production rate of long-range precision fire.
Hampered by the after-effects of slowing production during the COVID-19 pandemic and the task of ensuring Ukraine has the systems it needs to fight Russia, the defense base has been unable to replenish the Pentagon’s dwindling stockpile of weapons, let alone produce them. new defensive capabilities.
With 10 days left in fiscal year 2023, the Pentagon has failed to spend its entire weapons and development budget largely because the defense industry’s slow production rate has kept it from fulfilling orders, according to Gallagher.
“In one week, $11 billion of previously allocated defense money – the previous year’s money that we had given to the Department of Defense – will be gone [and] will turn into a pumpkin at midnight on September 30,” he said, referring to the end of previously unused funds with the arrival of the new fiscal year.
Representatives from leading defense industry companies were warned about the need to prepare for a potential war with China by lawmakers. CCTV via AP
The head of the Cyber, Information Technology and Innovation subcommittee Rep. Mike Gallagher says the US needs to enter the “war zone” to avoid conflict with China.Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA
The hearing comes a week after Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall gave a heart-wrenching speech in which he said China was rapidly mobilizing its military in preparation for a possible conflict.
“The intelligence could not be more obvious. China is preparing for war, and specifically for war with the United States,” Gallagher said, describing Kendall. “If we take this warning from the Secretary of the Air Force seriously, and thus become serious about preventing war with China, preventing World War III we will quickly move the Pentagon from a posture optimized for peacetime efficiency and onto a war path. “
“We will accept the fundamental paradox,” he added, “that to avoid war we must practice the fundamentals of war.”
A Chinese warship conducts exercises near Taiwan on August 19, 2023. CCTV via AP
Warning that a war with China “has the potential to make previous world wars seem tame by comparison,” Gallagher asked representatives from Anduril Industries, Saildrone, Inc. and defense industry powerhouse Lockheed Martin how the government can help ease issues that are slowing production.
“Tell us … what we need to do to solve this problem; what we need to do to charge our innovation enterprise in defense; what we need to do to defibrillate the sclerotic defense industrial base and thereby prevent war – which is the business we are all in,” he said. “We can’t keep wasting time.”
It is not a new problem; Gallagher said he has discussed the issue for years with military and industry leaders. But the matter has become more pressing as China expands and revolutionizes its military.
A Chinese fighter jet takes off from an aircraft carrier during military exercises around Taiwan on April 9, 2023.An Ni/Xinhua via AP
“We are no longer debating whether innovation is needed. Instead, the issue now is how to achieve it,” he said. Anduril’s CEO, Brian Schimpf, asked the government to “incentivize production in large quantities with the right capabilities.”
That could be achieved, industry leaders suggested, by awarding multi-year contracts for weapons and military equipment so that companies can better prepare for production needs and have confidence that they will survive if they ramp up production.
“There are some beneficial actions that the government can take. One is to really create a long-range production and procurement strategy, you know, five to 10 years or a multi-year approach,” said Lockheed Martin President and CEO James D. Taiclet. “Congress may need to adjust the way it allocates funding to such approaches so that providers … will have the confidence to scale up and invest in those higher levels of production.”
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
