According to a Govini report, despite efforts to reduce reliance, the US Military-Industrial Complex is increasingly dependent on Chinese suppliers, highlighting vulnerabilities in critical military technologies.
The U.S. Navy cut 40 percent of Chinese suppliers out of its “critical technologies” supply chains last year. The Army was able to cut 17 percent between 2022 and 2023. However, a recent investigation (pdf below) by a government data analysis business claims that the Air Force and defense departments have become more reliant on China.
“When we’re working with these program offices on a day-to-day basis, it remains just problem after problem after problem. And I think the good-news story is that…the department, in places, in certain spots, is really starting to become proactive about managing their supply chains,” Tara Murphy Dougherty, Govini’s chief executive officer, told reporters Wednesday, ahead of the report’s release.
The Pentagon purchased 15 so-called critical technologies, including biotechnologies, data interfaces, nuclear modernization, space, communications and networks, engines, advanced manufacturing, robotics and autonomy, advanced engineering materials, artificial intelligence and machine learning, hypersonics, clean energy, and storage, microelectronics, advanced computing, and directed energy, according to the report, which was created using Govini’s Ark data-analytics platform.
In an attempt to create more robust supply chains, Pentagon officials and legislators have been pressuring Defense Department units to lessen their reliance on equipment and parts manufactured in China since Congress banned the importation of communications technology from China in 2018.
“We know we’re never going to get China fully out of U.S. supply chains,” said Murphy Dougherty. “That’s not even the goal, but managing the presence of lots of different foreign suppliers and aligning those to the right level of capability or component or parts, making sure we have redundancy where we need it and that the most sensitive parts are fully protected and coming either directly from the United States or friends and allies is really what the call to action is.”
Murphy Dougherty acknowledged that there was still space for improvement but expressed amazement at the military departments’ advancement.
“When you look at the set of foreign countries that appear in defense supply chains—and, U.S. government supply chains—China is the most prominent and contributes the most even at incredibly high levels of the supply chains. These are not, you know, buried-down core components that don’t matter. These are as high as suppliers at the tier one level,” Murphy Dougherty said.
The COVID-19 epidemic brought to light the weaknesses in American supply networks and the country’s over-reliance on Chinese manufacturers of armaments. Despite some stabilization over the last four years, supply chain issues—whether related to cybersecurity or parts—continue to rank highly on the worries of military industries.
The supply chain security and dangers were emphasized in both the initial strategic paper and the cyber-focused strategy that the Pentagon produced earlier this year for defense contractors.
However, some defense officials would prefer not to hear vendors attribute program delays or cost overruns to problems with the supply chain.
“I have seen a lot of smaller space companies have absolutely no issues with supply chain. I see it more fundamentally in our bigger primes that whine about supply chain, and I think they are the ones that have the resources and the assets to actually do something about it and actually be smarter,” Frank Calvelli, Space Force’s acquisition chief, said in February. “Buy your parts early, get your orders in, be organized, be effective. But yeah—I can’t stand when they come in and say supply chain or COVID is why they can’t meet their schedule. I think it’s a lack of planning why they can’t meet their schedule.”
Murphy Dougherty contends, however, that there can also be a lack of a coherent policy.
“Even if it’s just OSD coming out and saying, ‘We’re not going to centralize the approach and we want the services to figure out what they’re each going to do, and then the services say we’re gonna let the program offices do it.’ Whatever the approach is, give us an answer. And that’s been lacking, which means you still have programs who aren’t doing anything to turn that corner,” she said. And “when it’s too late to do anything about it. The program inherits that challenge, and then it impacts production and ultimately availability.”
CHART: Foreign suppliers of “critical technologies” components by service in 2023
Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that, according to Bloomberg, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed the Pentagon cannot account for thousands of ultra-expensive F-35 parts globally.
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