Photo By Nancy Benecki | Military and industry leaders addressed the topic of “Connecting the Industrial Base...... read more read more
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Military and industry leaders said warfighting is changing at lightning speed and the Defense Department needs to strengthen its resources to meet growing demands at the Association of the United States Army’s latest hot topics session in Arlington Jan. 15.
Contested logistics is shaping how the Defense Logistics Agency will protect the nation’s ability to sustain the fight in all domains and at all levels of war, in the homeland and abroad, said DLA Director Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly as part of the event’s “Industrial Base Readiness: Connecting the Industrial Base to the Tactical Edge” panel.
DLA has the responsibility to support the entire joint force, and contested logistics is having an impact on everyone’s ability to support the fight, Simerly said.
“This strategic shift, this transformation, if you will, is taking a logistics behemoth and turning it into a combat support juggernaut and operationalizing aspects of the agency to be relevant and able to operate at the speed of war,” he continued.
Other speakers on the panel were Liz Miranda, executive deputy to the commanding general of the United States Army Materiel Command; Mary Legere, managing director for Accenture Global Defense; and moderator Jay Brannam, executive director of the Munitions Industrial Base Task Force.
Miranda asked the Army and industry representatives to think about being efficient in a volatile operational environment while considering financial and resource constraints.
“We may have to keep some things warm and some things cold so that we can leverage and focus on the right things that our Army needs and our soldiers need to fight in a resource-constrained environment that's very challenging,” she said. “It’s not the optimal way to operate, but it’s the reality.”
Panelists agreed that using new technology such as 3D printing and artificial intelligence should be priorities for the Defense Department.
“I left the Army in 2016 with tremendous concerns that as the intel community was living in the age of AI, if were we paying attention to what that meant,” Legere said. “How is the world moving faster than the Department of Defense? How are the supply chains that support transportation, aviation, health, moving faster than the defense industrial base?”
When asked what strategic initiatives DLA is implementing to ensure a resilient and competitive industrial base, Simerly highlighted the importance of small businesses.
DLA had $52 billion in obligations in the last fiscal year, which Simerly said was a record for the agency. About 60% of those obligations went to small business, and about 80% of the businesses DLA works with overall are small businesses. The number of small businesses in the defense industrial base shrunk by 20% since the pandemic, he said.
That rate of reduction is slowing down from 5 to 7% down to 1 or 2% per year, but that’s still not enough, he said.
“We don’t consider it to be a win to see fewer losses rather than gains. We need to take action to improve the number of players, reduce the barriers to entry, and allow our partners to have a greater persistent role in the industrial base,” Simerly said.
It’s also important to help small businesses stay resilient so DLA can tap into their innovation and adaptability, he said.
“We’re proud that over the past 12 years, we’ve met the small-business goals we’ve been given by the Department of Defense, and they are significant, but it’s not enough. We’ve got to add depth, and we’ve got to change it so we’re not losing partners,” he said.
DLA oversees nine supply chains, and the businesses that serve them are under tremendous pressure, he continued. Saving them is important and cannot be done by DLA alone or with each of the services taking a different approach.
“We have to find ways to prioritize and measure in common terms so we can make the right risk decisions,” he said.
Having a better relationship with data across the military services is an important step forward to achieve this, he said. Expanding on the Army’s “sensor to shooter to sustainer” concept to extend the linkage to suppliers will be another step in the right direction.
“We’re expanding the kill chain into the supply chain. I think we have to get to that further level, ‘sensor-shooter-sustainer-supplier,’ to ensure we have those linkages in that common view, and that’s DLA’s responsibility to develop the means to do that,” Simerly said.
There needs to be trust for small businesses to share their data with the Defense Department, Legere said. The DOD can’t afford to find out that factories that are supplying specific products were hit by a labor crisis or environmental catastrophe 10 days after the fact.
“We know that, by regulation and mandate, to be a part of that club, you have to have data. Are you willing to share it so that we can see it in real time and understand it would be used for the right purposes?” Legere said.
The AUSA hot topic series are professional development events focus on a range of key topics including: Army Space and Integrated Air and Missile Defense, Army Aviation, Army Cyber, Army Networks and Army Sustainment.
| Date Taken: | 01.21.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 01.21.2025 10:26 |
| Story ID: | 489378 |
| Location: | FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 69 |
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