The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) wants Congress in the upcoming fiscal 2025 defense authorization bill to reduce barriers to cooperation with foreign allies and partners to help fulfill current and future military “surge” needs.
“As we think about global capacity, we can’t afford to invest for surge capacity across our [domestic] industrial base,” AIA President Eric Fanning told reporters during a May 16 forum in Washington, D.C. “It’s just too expensive. The Department of Defense has got to find what are the critical things that we need quickly if we go to war or our partner goes to war, or what are the five things out of 100 that are the slowest parts of that.”
“If we work together with our partners and allies, we are increasing global capacity and innovation, but we have all these barriers to that in these regimes that are set up–for very good reasons, to make sure that technology and engineering is not getting into the wrong hands,” he said.
“You keep adding things to prevent the last bad thing from happening, and over time the process gets worse and worse,” Fanning said. “Right now, with what we’re learning about the war in Ukraine, trying to make sure that we maintain deterrence in the Pacific and part of that with this AUKUS agreement…this is an opportunity to identify what is preventing us from working better together and get at it.”
AIA wants Congress to lift “trade barriers on international sourcing where domestic supply is unavailable [in order] to reduce costs on U.S. manufacturers, suppliers and customers.”
“For example, pass [S. 4015] the Securing America’s Titanium Manufacturing Act of 2024, which enhances the competitiveness of America’s titanium industry by temporarily removing the 15 percent tariff on titanium sponge imports until such time as domestic titanium sponge production can be re-established,” the association said.
In March, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) introduced S. 415, co-sponsored by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Given “the significant uptick in demand for U.S. defense goods and services” through the Foreign Military Sales system, AIA said that it wants the fiscal 2025 defense authorization bill to require the Pentagon to keep tabs on the ability of contracting commands “to keep pace with current and projected security cooperation needs, and, if not, to provide a report on security cooperation workforce requirements needed to meet current and anticipated demand.”
AIA said that the security cooperation “licensing and contracting community is understaffed and under-resourced,” and the association wants Congress to fund more licensing and contracting officers–added personnel who would allow “surge in periods of conflicts.”
In addition, AIA said that Congress should plus up funding for U.S. exports–“the backbone of the licensing process.”
“The system is out of date and often fails in times of increased caseloads,” the association said. “For example, the system was down for eight days while the U.S. provided aid to the Israelis. This caused officers to hand carry licenses between the interagency slowing delivery timelines.”
While the federal government was able to spur and mobilize domestic, non-defense companies to build defense goods and to help achieve FDR’s goal of making the U.S. “the great arsenal of democracy” during World War II, Fanning said on May 16 that “it’s not as easy to retool now as it was in World War II” and that the U.S. should focus on improving production incentives for the defense industry.
“Things are more complex, more specialized [than in World War II],” said Fanning . “We looked very closely [during COVID-19] into what aerospace can do to help produce ventilators. It’s much more complicated than you think. The planes we fly today are very different than the ones they were shoving out the door in Detroit in World War II, and it’s the same with all the equipment that we have.”
“I think it is best to figure out ways to incentivize the industry that’s focused on this,” Fanning said. “They’re not complicated incentives. The problem is they can be expensive incentives or funds that compete against other things.”
As the U.S. is supporting Ukraine but not engaged in a large scale conflict like World War II, retooling U.S. commercial industry to build defense goods “is a long-term proposal” that would result in costly, excess industrial capacity at the end of the Ukraine war.
“Certainly, if we found ourselves in a conflict like that we would be retooling in a very different way using the Defense Production Act more aggressively, but I don’t think this situation necessarily calls for that,” he said. “I think what you want to do is figure out what are the things that I need to dial up if I go to war or I’m supporting an ally at war and make sure that you have the capacity to do that.”