​On Tuesday May 3, the Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense met to review the President’s FY23 funding request and budget justifications for the Department of Defense (DoD). Members largely discussed the support for Ukraine, threats in the Indo-Pacific, and troop wellness.

​Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

McALESTER, Okla. — Many of the U.S. Army’s ammunition plants, arsenals and depots, mostly constructed in World War II, are time capsules of the era. The service has tried to update these wartime facilities, but there is much left to do to bring them into the 21st century.
McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma is dotted with shrub-cloaked ammunition bunkers built around 1943 and resembling Hobbit-holes. Old covered bridges that extend from external break rooms to manufacturing facilities across roads loom overhead but are now closed because of the presence of asbestos.

​Since WWII, trains have carried in supplies and carted out ammunition in cargo containers. The Army has worked to update rail gauges and train cars to keep shipments moving on time, day and night.
Long, dark tunnels connect one facility for painting and prepping bomb shells to another where explosives are loaded into those rounds. A robotic arm spray-paints the outside of a shell in one facility.
But this automated capability isn’t available for the nuances of mixing explosives or filling shells, Brig. Gen. Gavin Gardner, commander of Joint Munitions Command, told Defense News on a tour of the ammunition plant’s production line for the Mark 82, a 500-pound bomb used by the Air Force. Chemists still manually mix explosives — like tritonal, which is 80% TNT and 20% aluminum powder — using a resonant acoustic mixer, then adding it to the weapon mostly by hand.
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Defense News accompanied Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on a trip to the plant last month.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is the largest consumer of installation energy in the Department of Defense, spending more than $1 billion per year on facility energy and water. With few exceptions, Army installations rely on commercial energy and water sources to accomplish critical missions. Uninterrupted access to energy and water is essential for readiness and the Army’s requirement to deploy, fight and win.
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Vulnerabilities in interdependent electric grids, natural gas pipelines and water resources supporting Army installations jeopardize mission infrastructure, base security and the ability to project power and sustain global operations. As the Army’s initial maneuver platforms, installations must be able to operate and meet power projection requirements in and from an increasingly contested multi-domain operational environment.

The Army Installations Strategy, published in December 2020, represents a pivot from an Industrial Age paradigm characterized by rigidity and purpose-built specialization to a data-rich, reconfigurable Information Age construct. The strategy also indicates that Army installations support total ground force operations to mobilize and project capabilities anywhere in the world, at any time.
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The Army Installation Energy and Water Strategic Plan aligns with Army Installations Strategy, establishing resilience, efficiency, and affordability as strategic goals. The strategic objectives of this plan are measurable through 12 metrics that clearly depict the Army’s progress in achieving resilient, efficient, and affordable installation of energy and water infrastructure. Building and measuring resilience improve the Army’s capability to prevent and recover from any disruption to energy and water utility services. That means greater readiness and a higher likelihood of mission success.

​On Wednesday, 9 March 2022, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing to discuss the U.S. military's current activities, goals, and challenges in the Indo-Pacific Region. The hearing broadly focused on addressing U.S. relations with China. There was general agreement that China remains the most threatening adversary to the United States. Democrats and Republicans were in agreement that the military needs to remain vigilant now more than ever in light of the Ukraine/Russian conflict. The hearing also focused on the U.S.'s commitment to protecting Taiwan and exploring the possibilities of conflict with China in that area. The witness panel consisted of representatives from the Department of Defense, Indo-Pacific Command, and the United Nations. 

​Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA), Rep. James Langevin (D-RI), Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT), Rep. William Keating (D-MA), Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), Rep. Kaiali'I Kahele (D-HI), Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Ranking Member Mike Rogers (R-AL), Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Rep. Robert Wittman (R-VA), Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Rep. Scott DesJaslais (R-TN), Rep. Trent Kelly (R-MS), Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK), Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI).

​On July 9, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14036, Promoting Competition in the American Economy. The Executive Order established the White House Competition Council to coordinate and promote Federal Government efforts to advance competition. Under Section 5 of the Order, the Department of Defense (DoD) was directed to submit a report to the Chair of the White House Competition Council reviewing the state of competition within the defense industrial base (DIB), including areas where a lack of competition may be of concern and any recommendations for improving the solicitation process.

Competition within the DIB is vital to the Department for several reasons. When markets are competitive, the Department reaps the benefits through improved cost, schedule, and performance for the products and services needed to support national defense. During initial procurement, incentivizing innovation through competition drives industry to offer its best technical solutions at a best-value cost and price. During contract performance, the expectation that contractors will have to compete against other firms in the future encourages them to perform effectively and efficiently.

​Competition is also an indicator of the necessary industrial capability and capacity to deliver the systems, key technologies, materials, services, and products the Department requires to support its mission. Insufficient competition may leave gaps in filling these needs, remove pressures to innovate to outpace other firms, result in higher costs to taxpayers as leading firms leverage their market position to charge more, and raise barriers for new entrants. Moreover, having only a single source or a small number of sources for a defense need can pose mission risk and, particularly in cases where the existing dominant supplier or suppliers are influenced by an adversary nation, pose significant national security risks. For all these reasons, promoting competition to the maximum extent possible is a top priority for the Department. 

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is a Department of Defense (DoD) organization focused exclusively on accelerating the adoption of commercial technology throughout the Services, Combatant Commands (CCMDs), defense agencies, and other components. DIU partners with organizations across the DoD and the interagency to rapidly prototype, field, and scale commercial solutions that can save lives, lead to new operational concepts, increase efficiencies, and save taxpayer dollars.

In fiscal year (FY) 2021, DIU delivered the following commercial solutions to DoD end-users, bringing the cumulative total of DIU delivered capabilities to 35.
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• Commercial Threat Data
• Cyber Asset Inventory Management
• Cyberspace Deception
• Installation Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems
• Generative Modeling of of Hypersonic Missile Trajectories
• Responsive Launch

Since COVID began, global supply is newsworthy. “Supply Chain Resilience” is a buzzword, and COVID, Suez Canal closure and other supply chain disruptions continue. It is one of President Biden’s biggest challenges. If current supply issues are not resolved soon, the potential for mass layoffs is real. 

Most of America’s fragile supply chain centers at the Port of Los Angeles and its worrisome impact on upcoming holidays. Lost has been troublesome news regarding our military’s critical supply chain, and its inability to keep fighter jets, bombers and refueling tankers afloat. The sprawling network of private contractors that manufacture critical replacement parts is known as the defense industrial base. Recent reports paint a worrisome picture of the defense industrial base’s rapidly declining ability to support our military.

Directed energy (DE) weapons use concentrated electromagnetic energy, rather than kinetic energy, to combat enemy forces. Although the United States has been researching directed energy since the 1960s, some experts have observed that the Department of Defense (DOD) has invested billions of dollars in DE programs that failed to reach maturity and were ultimately cancelled. In recent years, however, DOD has made progress on DE weapons development, deploying the first operational U.S. DE weapon in 2014 aboard the USS Ponce. Since then, DE weapons development has continued, with DOD issuing a Directed Energy Roadmap to coordinate the department’s efforts. DOD has also introduced a High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative, which seeks to strengthen the defense industrial base for DE weapons and improve laser beam quality and efficiency.

​This report provides background information and issues for Congress on DE weapons, including high-energy lasers (HELs) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons, and outlines selected unclassified DOD, Air Force, Army, and Navy DE programs. If successfully fielded, HELs could be used by ground forces in a range of missions, including short-range air defense (SHORAD); counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS); and counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) missions. HPM weapons could provide a non-kinetic means of disabling adversary electronics and communications systems. Compared with traditional munitions, DE weapons could offer lower logistical requirements, lower costs per shot, and—assuming access to a sufficient power supply—deeper magazines. These weapons could, however, face a number of limitations not faced by their kinetic counterparts. For example, atmospheric conditions (e.g., rain, fog, obscurants) could potentially limit the range and beam quality of DE weapons, in turn reducing their effectiveness. ​