Sparking the U.S. industrial base to churn out equipment for Ukraine is the key challenge in helping that nation defeat Russia, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Leonard Kosinski, the Joint Staff’s director for logistics (J-4), said on Feb. 28.
“Beside the word Ukraine, in my 18 months in my current position, the other words I’ve heard the most are ‘defense industrial base’ to be able to do that,'” he told a Hudson Institute forum on the conflict. “With Russia, you could argue they’re on a wartime footing…and we are not. We are trying to get back to that, collectively, to include Europe and like-minded allies and partners to produce at the scope and scale and surge capacity that’s needed. Decisions were made over the last couple decades when the U.S. was in a different kind of conflict and not prepared for this great power, near peer type competition.”
Kosinski said that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks’ Replicator initiative to develop and field attritable drones quickly and use battle experience to improve them is the way of the future.
While allies are unsure why the U.S. is unable to solve its defense industrial base supply problem, Kosinski said that a number of factors, including the three decade downsizing of the U.S. defense industry and the aging workforce, have complicated a fix.
DoD needs “the ability to provide multi-year contracts and confidence in industry to be able to invest,” he said. “The workforce—weldings of ships and automated manufacturing–that skill set is older now and leaving the workforce. How do we encourage young people to take that on? These are things we’re working very hard on.”
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said that congressional authorization for DoD multi-year procurements will increase because of the Ukraine conflict and that, in at least one case, the U.S. defense industry has responded rapidly.
“The small diameter bombs that Ukraine needed, when Congress permitted direct acquisition authority between the department and Boeing [BA], they were able to ramp up production, and from the beginning of that contract to the time they were delivered to Ukraine was like a month,” she said. “If we really do have the political will to get something delivered quickly, this country can produce the weapons we need with some exceptions, but we’re literally missing people and some parts in the supply chain. That’s when you have the strength of your alliances as well and look to see does somebody have the ability to produce these things quicker, and can we help them get there?”
Fiscal 2024 direct acquisition authority allows the supply of 11,550 SDB-IIs to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel.
Gearing up European defense companies to speed equipment to Ukraine “is mostly about giving them long-term contracts, but that’s not enough,” said Jan Jireš, the Czech Ministry of Defense’s director general of defense policy and planning. “There are some choke points when it comes to access to some raw materials. For example, there are huge problems in Europe when it comes to producing powder for artillery shells. What is even more frustrating in Europe is we have faced a culturally-embedded unwillingness of banks and other financial institutions to invest in defense industry and provide defense companies with financing…but it is changing. The European defense ministers have made, over the past couple of months, a coordinated, concerted push to motivate the European financial institutions to start investing in defense.”