{"id":18319,"date":"2018-08-06T15:00:56","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/08\/06\/efforts-underway-to-resuscitate-weapons-supply-chain\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T21:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:43:10","slug":"efforts-underway-to-resuscitate-weapons-supply-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/smr\/space-missile-defense\/2018\/08\/06\/efforts-underway-to-resuscitate-weapons-supply-chain\/","title":{"rendered":"Efforts underway to resuscitate weapons supply chain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Defense companies are taking matters into their own hands \u2014 in partnership with the Pentagon \u2014 to recover a withering supply chain<\/a> for the munitions market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Released in the spring of this year, the annual industrial capabilities report, put out by the Pentagon\u2019s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, concluded that the industrial base of the munitions sector is particularly strained \u2014 something the report blamed on the start-and-stop nature of related procurement over the last 20 years, as well as the lack of new designs being internally developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For their part, primes are investing their own dollars to meet demand, particularly as the Pentagon plans to invest more than $20 billion in munitions in its next budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe went through a period over the last decade, where U.S. production requirements of munitions were at a fairly low rate compared to historical,\u201d said Frank St. John, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin\u2019s Missiles and Fire Control business. \u201cOur response was to work hard to bring international partners into the programs and fill that with foreign military sales requirements. What we\u2019ve seen over the last 18-25 months is a recognition by the department that they need to rebuild the stock on munitions. We\u2019ve seen a steady increase across the board in every one of our programs \u2014 rate increases from 20 percent to 80 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as primes expand factory capacity to achieve increased rates, suppliers are often limited in their ability to scale. That leaves Lockheed and Raytheon, the companies that together account for about 97 percent of the Defense Department\u2019s munitions and missile procurement funding, to identify critical areas that might have a single source and make investments to develop alternatives, avoiding any single points of failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\t