Weapons (Formerly Munitions) –
The U.S. weapons industry and its associated industrial and innovation base are critical to protecting and advancing U.S. national security and defense goals. The U.S. must maintain military-technological overmatch against its adversaries as directed in the December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS):
The United States must retain overmatch—the combination of capabilities in sufficient scale to prevent enemy success and to ensure that America’s sons and daughters will never be in a fair fight. Overmatch strengthens our diplomacy and permits us to shape the international environment to protect our national interests. Ensuring that the U.S. military can defeat our adversaries requires weapon systems that clearly overmatch theirs in lethality…Support for a vibrant domestic manufacturing sector, a solid defense industrial base, and resilient supply chains is a national priority.
Similarly, the January 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) emphasizes:
A more lethal force, strong alliances and partnerships, American technological innovation, and a culture of performance will generate decisive and sustained U.S. military advantages...We cannot expect success fighting tomorrow’s conflicts with yesterday’s weapons or equipment. To address the scope and pace of our competitors’ and adversaries’ ambitions and capabilities, we must invest in modernization of key capabilities through sustained, predictable budgets.
Weapons and their enabling technologies are critical capabilities that underpin the need for U.S. military overmatch and lethality, as highlighted in the NSS and NDS. The industrial and innovation base and supply chains that enable weapons research, development, and production are important to the larger U.S. defense industry. First, weapons are critical to enabling overmatch in U.S. and allied warfighting capabilities versus near-peer competitors Russia and China, as well as against adversaries threatening U.S. interests such as North Korea, Iran, and violent extremist organizations. Second, weapons are critical items that require production and prepositioning to prepare for crises and conflicts and can be quickly consumed once fighting breaks out. Next, just as they were a critical component of the precision strike “second offset” of U.S. defense technology, weapons and their enabling technologies will almost certainly be an important element—the lethality element—of any future “third offset” in U.S. defense technology. Weapons in combination with technologies such as autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, space, sensors, communications, and cyber could very well lead the “third offset.” Fourth, weapons and their enabling technologies play a vital role in driving the U.S. defense industry to constantly develop and produce more advanced technologies in areas such as explosives, warheads, guidance and control, propulsion, and other key technologies. Finally, weapons play a key part of U.S. foreign cooperation with allies and partners to provide strategic advantage by enhancing capabilities. This includes the export of weapons through Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) programs as well as cooperating on joint development and production efforts.
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