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With the long-awaited Defense Industrial Base report finally released, analysts have begun pouring over the 146-pages-long document.

One of the first issue experts to offer commentary in a national publication was Jeff Green, president of Washington, D.C.-based government relations firm J.A. Green & Company, and member of the ARPN panel of experts.

Writing for Defense News, Green argues that the report – which outlines nearly 300 supply chain vulnerabilities and sounds the alarm on China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security – provides “a significant step forward for the U.S. military.”

His rationale for this assessment is that the report “goes further than the Department of Defense has traditionally wanted to venture.”

Says Green:

“The report clearly identifies five macro factors that have weakened the defense industrial base, including the ‘Industrial Policies of Competitor Nations.’ Though U.S. manufacturing has declined for a variety of reasons, the report notes that China, in particular, has used illegal means to dominate critical global markets. These means include espionage, evasion of export controls, market access restrictions, subsidies, and dumping, among others.”

He adds:

“Fortunately, the report goes beyond problem identification to provide a Blueprint for Action. Though many of these are locked away in a classified annex to the report, the White House has provided some clues as to how it wishes to proceed.”

Green offers some commentary on some of the report’s suggested fixes, which, among others, include the creation of a “national industrial policy to support national security efforts,” an area in which he says the “Department of Defense has been deficient for decades.” Other suggestions include the encouraged “use of direct funding to target and support critical sectors of the supply chain,” as well as educational efforts and outreach to global allies.

The bottom line, according to Green, is:

“The Department of Defense and the White House have started an important conversation by doing the research to bring these problems to the foreground, and it will be up to Congress next year to provide the resources and legislation necessary to cure them.”

While September coverage for our blog mostly revolved around two major story lines, i.e. electronic vehicles battery tech and trade, today’s release of the long-awaited Defense Industrial Base Report will likely change this for October — for good reasons.

As Peter Navarro, assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing policy, outlines today in a piece for the New York Times, this “first governmentwide assessment of America’s manufacturing and military industrial base (…) identifies almost 300 vulnerabilities, ranging from dependencies on foreign manufacturers to looming labor shortages.” ARPN followers will not be surprised to learn that “[a] core threat to the American industrial base comes from China.”

Writes Navarro:

“According to the report, ‘China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security,’ including a ‘growing number of both widely used and specialized metals, alloys and other materials, including rare earths and permanent magnets.’

The American military is also heavily dependent on foreign suppliers in such critical areas as printed circuit boards, machine tools, materials for propulsion systems and even nuclear warheads. As the report notes: ‘Because the supply chain is globalized and complex, it is challenging to ensure that finished assemblies, subsystems, and systems’ for nuclear warheads utilize ‘trusted, discrete components due to diminishing U.S.-based microelectronic and electronic manufacturing capability.’

From a resource policy perspective, there is much to unpack in this 146 pages-long report that was compiled by sixteen working groups over the course of the past fourteen months, so expect our blog focus for the next few weeks to shift towards defense-related supply chain vulnerabilities affecting our national security, and their policy implications.

For your weekend reading pleasure, find the full report on the Department of Defense’s website.

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