American defense industries lack the capacity to supply the missiles and other weapons needed for a war with China, and U.S. forces would lose the conflict as a result, members of Congress and private defense experts warned Thursday.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recently held a simulated conflict with Beijing that revealed the U.S. military would quickly run out of bombs, missiles and other weapons within days of a war. The Pentagon has identified China as the U.S. military’s “pacing challenge.”
The growing risk of war with China over Taiwan or other flash points in the Indo-Pacific was the backdrop for Thursday’s committee hearing. Members and experts called for emergency measures to rebuild the American defense industry to avoid an armed clash with Beijing.
“Our defense industrial base lacks the capacity to deter and win a fight with the PRC,” said committee Chairman John Moolenaar, Michigan Republican, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
Mr. Moolenaar said U.S. defense firms cannot innovate rapidly and supply chains for key defense components are vulnerable to China’s coercion and manipulation. He called for bold new policies and significant resources for the defense industrial base.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the simulation of a conflict with China revealed significant gaps in defense production capacity. He said U.S. defense industries rely heavily on three minerals that China primarily supplies.
“History tells us we need a healthy defense industrial base now to deter aggression and make sure the world’s dictators think again before dragging the U.S. and the world into yet another disastrous conflict,” Mr. Krishnamoorthi said.
Exhausted stockpiles
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan voiced similar concerns on Wednesday. He said that, given current stockpiles, American munitions would be exhausted quickly in a China conflict.
“God forbid we end up in a full-scale war with the PRC,” Mr. Sullivan said at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But any war with a country like the PRC, a military like the PRC, is going to involve the exhaustion of munition stockpiles very rapidly.”
Mr. Sullivan said the United States must build up stocks of vital munitions and the components required to produce them on short notice and that U.S. defense industries must “close the gap” with China’s large-scale defense and weapons production capacity.
Private analysts told the committee that the U.S. defense industry’s capacity problems were growing partly because of a long period of neglect and misguided production priorities.
Christian Brose, chief strategy officer with the autonomous weapons maker Anduril Industries, said that for decades, U.S. and allied military powers have produced increasingly small numbers of expensive platforms and weapons that are costly, slow and difficult to make.
War simulations show that the U.S. military will run out of weapons in less than a week of war with China, Mr. Brose said.
The war in Ukraine also has sharply drawn down the store of U.S. weapons. Ukraine’s military used a decade’s worth of U.S. tactical weapons in the initial months of its war with Russia, he said.
“America and our allies increasingly lack the industrial capacity to deter — and, if necessary, fight and win — a great power conflict,” Mr. Brose said.
He said his company offers one solution: building thousands of aerial and underwater drones that can be replaced inexpensively in a conflict.
William C. Greenwalt, a defense analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, said the American defense industry was the “arsenal of democracy” that won World War II. Today, he said, that arsenal is in decline.
“We have now reached an inflection point, as our industrial deterrence is no longer credible,” Mr. Greenwalt testified.
He said that despite significant spending on defense over the past two decades, the once-vast U.S. technological dominance has eroded.
Mr. Greenwalt said government leaders lack a sense of urgency in restoring the defense industrial base and the defense industry must retool.
Shrinking pool
Part of the problem, analysts said, is a lack of competition in the defense sector, which has contracted sharply to a small number of defense contractors.
“Just as was the case in the Soviet Union, centrally planned, linear, predictive processes and hubristic mindsets have destroyed innovation and creativity,” Mr. Greenwalt said.
He said 25 years of outsourcing the industry to China have produced rising uncertainty about the security and reliability of American defense base supply chains.
Mr. Greenwalt said a war industry board should be created to resolve the vulnerabilities. Supply chains and critical infrastructure must be secured, using advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to remove or reduce Chinese-sourced components in the defense supply system.
“It is now time to act and take measures to improve the defense industrial base and build a new arsenal of democracy,” he said.
Mr. Greenwalt said an emergency program is needed over the next one to five years to avoid war with China. “Peace comes through strength, and that strength at its foundation begins with our industrial base,” he said.
Long timelines
Mr. Brose said drawn-out defense manufacturing timelines have resulted in lower production of weapons and defense platforms.
In fiscal 2023, the Pentagon planned to build one or two submarines, several warships, 22 tanks and a few dozen stealth jets. Fewer than five intelligence satellites or long-range bombers were ordered, Mr. Brose said.
“Each year, we are retiring ships, combat aircraft and other major platforms at a faster rate than the industrial base is capable of replacing them,” he said.
Critical munitions needed for a major conflict are not being produced. The Biden administration’s budget request for fiscal 2024 planned for 118 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, 39 Standard Missile-3s, 125 Standard Missile-6s, 34 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and 550 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles — Extended Range, Mr. Brose said.
“Most of these weapons cost several million dollars apiece, and the capacity to scale production does not exist,” Mr. Brose said. “It is not hard to imagine how the United States would run out of these and other critical munitions in a matter of days in a war against China and then struggle to replace them on a relevant timeline.”
U.S. Stinger anti-aircraft missiles supplied to the Ukrainian military were depleted in several months of fighting, and replacing the missiles will take two to three years, Mr. Brose said.
China’s defense industrial base is outproducing U.S. industry in various weapons, including warships, combat aircraft, missiles and drones.
The U.S. capacity problem “did not happen overnight either. It was the product of decades of systematic U.S. deindustrialization and Chinese hyper-industrialization — a consequence of long-standing U.S. policy toward Beijing that aspired to forge a symbiotic bilateral relationship with America as buyer and China as builder,” Mr. Brose said.
The policy produced “a colossal disparity” in the ability to build weapons. China’s shipbuilding capacity is more than 200 times larger than in the U.S., he said.
“Our current defense industrial base simply cannot build enough of these platforms and weapons to win a conventional arms race against China,” Mr. Brose said.
Halimah Najieb-Locke, until recently deputy assistant defense secretary for industrial base resilience in the Biden administration, said supply chain problems were highlighted when a shortage of semiconductors emerged after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Notably, the shortages of key parts impeded our ability to produce mission-critical weapons needed in the Russia-Ukraine war and amplified the growing concern over our depleted stockpile,” said Ms. Najieb-Locke, now with the technology firm Entanglement Inc.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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