Lawmakers’ continued failure to pass a 2025 budget could hinder Pentagon efforts to beef up supply chains and bolster defense, defense officials warned Tuesday.
They spoke at the release of the Defense Department’s nearly 100-page implementation plan for its inaugural defense industry strategy. The plan is broadly intended to bolster supply chains to make weapons securely, faster, and en masse. It outlines six initiatives for fiscal 2025, starting with improvements to the missile and submarine industries.
“It’s best for us to have a full budget done…on time for us to be able to implement. It creates a lot of challenges in procurement, in general, and also in planning for us, when we have these continuing resolutions. So we’re hopeful that Congress will work together and develop and pass a bill, a defense policy bill, as well as a funding bill soon,” Laura Taylor-Kale, who leads Pentagon industrial base policy, told reporters Tuesday.
The Pentagon plans to spend about $39.4 billion on the industry strategy in fiscal 2024, according to a fact sheet, and asked for $37.7 billion in 2025.
In both years, the vast majority of funds—about $30 billion apiece—will go to missiles and munitions, followed by $3.3 billion for the submarine industrial base and $500 million for the Defense Department’s Replicator initiative.
Taylor-Kale said the strategy was coming together during the 2024 and 2025 budget cycles, so the 2026 budget—now under construction—will be the first to fully incorporate its plans and principles.
She said the department intends to update the strategy and implementation plan annually.
The plan’s six initiatives aim to address the biggest pitfalls the defense industrial base has from long and costly development timelines to a dearth of skilled workforce, reduced productivity, and intellectual property theft.
Other initiatives include moving critical defense capabilities to reduce supply-chain vulnerabilities; adding co-production and development between U.S. and allied and partner nations; modernizing supply-chain infrastructure in the nuclear industrial base and organic industrial base, which includes facilities that make, store, and dispose of munitions; fine-tuning use of rapid acquisition for better prototyping and fielding; and protecting intellectual property.
Much of this work is in progress, officials said. There will be a classified annex to the implementation plan with metrics and risks released in the coming months.
“This implementation plan offers industry, global allies, and partners clear direction on the Department’s priorities for industrial capacity building,” Taylor-Kale said in a statement announcing the plan’s release. “Implementing these initiatives will require coordinated efforts across the DoD, and support and cooperation from our interagency, industry, and international stakeholders, as well as our champions in Congress.”
