Declining manufacturing and reliance on "off-shoring" have negatively impacted U.S. defense industrial-base capabilities. A national strategy to integrate military and civilian logistics is needed to ensure military readiness against adversarial threats.
Achieving True Logistics Resiliency Within the United States
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What’s the Issue? The pace of operations and continual stress on the military fleet has significantly decreased the overall readiness of the United States’ aircraft, ships, armor, and radar systems. Given its current manufacturing constraints, the United States will not be able to produce the necessary parts and components in the required quantities to support both the initial operational surge and subsequent sustainment during a protracted, near-peer adversarial conflict.
What can we do? MITRE’s experts in logistics, supply chain, national security, and systems engineering analyzed this national security issue and develop comprehensive recommendations for the incoming administration to implement.
What did we find? Achieving the objective of integrating military and civilian logistics to meet today’s enduring security threats will require whole-of-nation solutions. The Department of Defense, inter-governmental agencies, and private industry should come together to more effectively optimize the nation’s logistics networks to ensure sustained resiliency, whenever and wherever needed. The incoming administration should develop a comprehensive and enduring Logistics Grand Strategy within the first 100 days to convey a clear direction for the nation and the overall importance of this issue. Additionally, the administration should:
- Develop an interagency/public-private consortium focused on mitigating manufacturing challenges associated with military fleet sustainment and readiness.
- Create a collaborative manufacturing framework for data-driven tools to close the gaps between industrial base capabilities and Department of Defense demand requirements.
- Clarify and strengthen roles and responsibilities of key defense and industrial base leaders and organizations.