The Pentagon should ramp up its own production of military equipment by leveraging the civilian workforce’s expertise as the war in Ukraine is straining the U.S.’s military supply.
Some have estimated that the U.S. has already exhausted at least one-third of its supply of Javelin anti-tank missiles and one quarter of its Stinger missiles to supply Ukraine. And it may take at least 32 months to replenish the Stingers.
Shortfalls like these have prompted the administration to invoke the Defense Production Act, a law enacted in 1950 to allow the federal government to require the private sector to produce military supply to meet domestic and global demands.
“It is clear that the private sector industrial base alone is inadequate to meet our defense needs. We must invest in and fully deploy existing federal facilities to fully meet the urgent requirements in Ukraine that are straining our global military supply and equipment capability,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“The private sector industrial base alone is clearly not prepared for the multiple global challenges that arise when Ukraine has such critical needs. Moreover, federal facilities can be mobilized on demand rather than having to coax, incentivize, or nationalize the private sector,” he added.
AFGE has identified numerous actions and reforms the Biden administration can and should recommend to Congress to better leverage federal employees at DoD depots and arsenals to meet the challenges.
These include waiving laws that favor non-competitive contracts, suspending arbitrary time limits on the use of carryover funds at depots, providing DoD civilian police who provide essential security at industrial base facilities with the same pay and benefits that other law enforcement officers receive, and raising pay caps on the Wage Grade employees who are the backbone of military depots.
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