Weapons –
The United States (US) Weapons Industry remains robust, with sufficient support from the private sector to underpin current U.S. National Security missions. Although we continue in an era of constrained budgets, demand for weapons will not diminish. The industrial base (private and public sectors) is able to balance maintaining basic infrastructure, providing direct support to ongoing conflicts, and developing competitive strategies to ensure the United States' technical and deployable primacy in the world. The competing demands amongst the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and armed services add extra tension to budget constraints. Substantial efforts by both Congress and the defense establishment to reduce waste associated with defense acquisition do not focus enough on ensuring the health of the defense weapons industrial base. The USG should conduct an assessment on current Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) funding, focus strategies to improve collaboration between defense and industry laboratories, continue revisions of export controls and regulations to support greater opportunities to increase competition, and ensure improvement of the acquisition processes. Without a comprehensive assessment and focused improvement efforts, the United States' Defense Industrial Base can expect diminution of its capacity, innovation, and technological advantage to resource National Security missions.
The Weapons Industry and Markets are important to National Security Resourcing because the federal government relies on both domestic and global markets to supply the goods and services the Department of Defense (DoD) uses in performing national security missions. While some weapons needed for national security are directly available from commercial markets, others are not and the government must undertake extensive measures to create and maintain markets or in-house organizations capable of supplying goods and services unique to national security needs. The Department of Defense related weapons industry requires security of information and security of the supply chain. The Weapons Industry Seminar used the following methodologies to evaluate the status of the Weapons Industry:
Evaluated
• Structure, conduct, and performance of select sectors in the weapons industry
• Strengths, vulnerabilities, and capabilities of select industries (U.S. and global) to contribute to the nation’s economic welfare and national security requirements
• How select U.S. and global firms and organizations interact with governments to influence laws, policies, and regulations
• Government-business relations in support of, and their effect on, the management of the DoD resource allocation process and the resulting ability of select industries (U.S. and global) to satisfy national security capability requirements
• How geostrategic context (to include a nation’s history, geography, natural resources, cultural identity, governance, macro-economic policy, security interests) and the government-business environment shape the U.S. and other select countries’ defense industrial bases (DIB), and the resulting approaches to integrating strategy and resources to satisfy national security capability requirements
Analyzed
• Political and economic interactions and trade-offs in developing trade, logistics, and acquisition policies and processes and the related impact on shaping, developing and regulating the capacity of industry to contribute to economic welfare and satisfy national security capability requirements
Developed
• Politically and resource-informed policy recommendations to improve U.S. national security requirements and economic interests
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