Shifting Munitions Requirements For Great Power Competition.

• Author: Stewart, Jennifer
• Position: NDIA POLICY POINTS

This fall, the congressional defense committees will be hard at work negotiating the final fiscal year 2024 funding, policies and authorities critical to support our warfighters and the defense industrial base.

One important focus area is the resolution of the president's request for multi-year procurement authorities and funding for specific munitions.

The illegal invasion of Ukraine highlighted surge production challenges with munitions, including supply chain limitations and vulnerabilities, long lead times for components and raw materials, price volatility, the availability of skilled workforce, aging industrial infrastructure and constrained production capacity. These challenges inform the difficulties in meeting immediate requirements to restock current inventories, let alone addressing emerging requirements to scale new production.

Government requirements, budgets and contracts drive both investment and production levels. Munitions requirements generated by the military services are derived from the National Defense Strategy, and these requirements have evolved over the last 30 years. In the 1990s, the munitions requirements for the military services were tied to operational plans with planning assumptions for the United States to prevail in two major theater wars.

Over time, the munitions requirements have adjusted to new national strategies. The first adjustment was to generate requirements needed to prevail in one major theater war while maintaining effective deterrence in a second theater until resources could be shifted.

The second adjustment occurred as the United States shifted from planning for major theater war operations to executing low-to-medium intensity conflicts. This second adjustment also de-prioritized certain categories of munitions such as artillery and long-range fires.

In addition, munitions have often been the bill payers for higher priorities in the Defense Department budgeting process. While the military services and combatant commands reference requirements-based processes, I the munitions requirements in the annual budget process are often softened from "what is required" to "what we can afford."

As an example, the services have resourced buying enough munitions to meet training requirements rather than major theater of war requirements. The services also tend to prioritize a wider breadth and shallower depth of munitions capabilities rather than completing the depth of any one capability.

These decisions...