Globally, threats to the United States are converging. Our most powerful antidote to these crises - hard power is at stake, not only because of the precarious base of our defense industry, but also because of China's control of our ** chain. There is evidence that there are loopholes in China's ** chain, and that China's control over US ** munitions and platforms is shrinking day by day, but we still have not broken this control. This status quo threatens our ability to deter adversaries in the Indo-Pacific region.
According to the latest "Scorecard" released by data analytics company Goviny, countless Chinese companies are still deeply rooted in the ** chain of the Ministry of Defense, involving 12 key technologies. In addition, the Pentagon's draft Defense Industry Strategy states:"Today's defense industrial base will be challenged to provide the U.S. military and our allies and partners with the capabilities they need to engage and win in major conflicts at the speed and scale necessary to do so."
This is the case when just-in-time defense manufacturing encounters dependence on Chinese companies, not to mention the companies that China may blockade Taiwan during a crisis, on which many sophisticated and modern platforms depend.
The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 has had little impact on the Pentagon's timeline for eliminating dependence on specific Chinese companies and materials. The current efforts to alleviate chain dependencies are narrow in scope and lengthy in time, sending a self-evident message to China that the U.S. Department of Defense does not have, and will not soon have, the bases needed to wage a protracted war against China. The message to Taiwan is that without access to these risky chains, we will not be able to create the platforms and platforms we need to defend you in a protracted war.
Thankfully, there are solutions that the Pentagon and ** can do to protect the Achilles' heel of our defense chain.
First, they can focus on resilience rather than independence, which requires multiple solutions to ensure that the Department of Defense has sufficient inventory or access to the products, materials, and services needed to produce protracted conflicts. To build resilience, the Pentagon could focus on expanding its stockpiles, cultivating new second and nearshore**, and redesigning munitions and platforms that are particularly critical to Indo-Pacific warfare.
Resilience requires assessing the true extent of dependence on China and Taiwan, and remedying it.
Second, the Pentagon should ask Congress to change its approach to defining, analyzing, and addressing the Pentagon's ** chain vulnerabilities. To date, the work has focused on inputs and businesses located in so-called protected countries such as China. However, if its approach were inverted from inputs (e.g., rare earths) to outputs (e.g., F-35 fighter jets), the issue of dependency could be addressed in a more comprehensive way, forcing a review of the entire chain.
The defense industrial base is required to rapidly conduct bottom-up analysis of critical munitions and platforms, identifying each node in its ** chain. By law, this can be easily done with commercial software. This would allow for the establishment of baselines for simulating different platforms and munitions in different scenarios. These models will quickly identify potential and increasing risks and assist the Department of Defense in proactively addressing them. These models also help avoid a situation where the Department of Defense has to react reactively to the collapse of a critical node in the chain.
In the end, as in the case of the War Production Committee in the United States during World War II, it is up to someone or organization to be in charge of these tasks. The Federal Procurement Security Council is probably the best organization to play this role because it does a great job of aggregating our chain dependencies, comparing them to requirements to create demand signals, and deciding how best to meet those needs.
The Pentagon could include these actions in its budget for the next fiscal year or, given their urgency, into a single, targeted bill, executive order, or future emergency supplemental budget.
No one knows if or when tensions with China will escalate into armed conflict. But there is no doubt that the world is becoming more dangerous. The United States must send a message to China** that we are ready to wage a long war if needed. The United States must also send a message to Taiwan: The United States will be able to support Taiwan in times of need. Without an end to China's stranglehold on our defense chain, it will be difficult for us to send these two messages.
John G. Ferrari and Mark Rosenblatt, February 15, Breakthrough Defense