Rebuilding the Industrial Base's Strategic Resilience.

• Author: Bayer, Michael

It has been a productive few months at the National Defense Industrial Association. Thanks to your substantive contributions, NDIA provided valuable feedback to Congress on the impact inflation levels are having on your companies.

Your collaboration ensured the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act and the Defense Appropriations Act, which passed in December, carried both the necessary authorities and the associated funding to begin to address the systemic challenges inflation is having on our industry.

Combined, these provisions allow contracting officers to make economic adjustments to current contracts. The association will remain engaged with the Defense Department and Congress to provide educational information regarding the implementation of this important relief, so please continue to engage with us regarding how the process is--or is not--working for you.

In addition, NDIA releases Vital Signs 2023 this month. The purpose of Vital Signs is to encourage conversations at all levels of government and among Americans interested in national defense about the necessary policies and investments required to maintain the superior readiness of the U.S. defense industrial base. Read the report's executive summary along with in-depth stories on pages 26 through 38 in this month's issue of National Defense.

More than 170 NDIA member companies contributed to the Vital Signs survey. If you were one of them, thank you! NDIA remains committed to ensuring your voice is heard by government policymakers and external audiences.

The results of this year's survey are unambiguous: the federal acquisition process is growing more--not less--cumbersome; the lack of budget stability is breaking companies and causing significant workforce uncertainty; and the challenges of finding and retaining talent are coercively impacting even our most strategic defense programs.

NDIA member companies reported in the Vital Signs survey that over the next year, 58 percent believed defense contracting business conditions would be about the same, and 29 percent reported the business conditions would get worse. Put another way, 87 percent believed that despite the sense of urgency to re-posture the industrial base to deter and--if needed--decisively prevail in peer conflict, nothing is going to change ...the calvary is not coming. Let us not forget. We are the calvary needed to revitalize urgency and to change the status quo. But we cannot do it without you.

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