Pentagon: US arms industry struggling to keep up with China

America’s defense industry is struggling to achieve the kind of speed and responsiveness to stay ahead in a high-tech arms race with competitors such as China, an unreleased draft of a new Pentagon report on the defense industry warns, Report informs referring to Politico.

The first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy, which is set to be released in the coming weeks by Pentagon acquisition chief William LaPlante, is meant to be a comprehensive look at what the Pentagon needs in order to tap into the expertise of small tech firms, while funding and supporting traditional companies to move faster to develop new tech.

As it stands now, the U.S. defense industrial base “does not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience required to satisfy the full range of military production needs at speed and scale,” according to a draft version of the report, obtained by POLITICO.

The document, dated November 27, adds that “just as significantly, the traditional defense contractors in the [defense industrial base] would be challenged to respond to modern conflict at the velocity, scale, and flexibility necessary to meet the dynamic requirements of a major modern conflict.”

It notes that America builds the best weapons in the world, but it can’t produce them quickly enough.

The US also has to acknowledge that not all the answers are at home. “We must solicit entrants of all types: large and small, domestic, and foreign, and those with no previous relationship to the DoD or defense production,” the report says.

“The nation needs to rally to the common defense,” the report concludes. “This NDIS is a call to both the public and private sectors for focused, dedicated efforts to build and secure the industrial capability and capacity necessary to ensure our military has the materiel available to deter our potential adversaries, and if necessary, defeat them in battle. This call to action may seem a great cost, but the consequences of inaction or failure are far greater.”