The Pentagon is rebalancing its portfolio of PGMs away from short-range weapons used for counterterrorism operations toward long-range weapons that can be fired from standoff ranges, which would be needed to project power against China or Russia. Yet it is doubtful that the DoD is buying enough of these weapons to blunt and defeat an initial invasion, and it certainly is not stockpiling enough PGMs for a protracted war. The trend in its conventional strike purchases mirrors that of DoD procurement overall: the Pentagon is buying fewer weapons at greater cost. More alarmingly, these trends raise questions about whether the DoD is buying the right mix of weapons and whether it will be able to afford large quantities of long-range weapons. The Pentagon needs to find a cost-effective mix of weapons so that it has enough PGMs to deny an enemy a quick victory and then enough stamina to prevail in a long war.
That was from Stacie Pettyjohn and Hannah Dennis at CNAS, Precision and Posture: Defense Spending Trends and the FY23 Budget Request.
Number and Mix of PGMs
Hard to disagree with that. The authors find that the mix of weapons has been heavily anti-ground, and while the Army and Navy have been pivoting to Tomahawks, Naval Strike Missiles, and SM-6s, the Air Force is buying “a shockingly small number of long-range anti-ship weapons.”
They found that short and then medium range PGMs were surged in the FY15 to FY20 timeframe during Operation Inherent Resolve. However, as medium range flatlines and short range drops off in spending, long-range started spending has become the largest category of PGM spending in FY 22 and into the projected future.
Long range costs more. This will lead to a dramatic decline in the number of overall PGMs ordered despite a slightly growing overall budget.
Industrial Base
They also find that weakness in the industrial base is exacerbated by DoD’s volatile procurement of munitions and missiles. Procurement quantities can swing from one year to the next, and often what was put into the FYDP plan is changed as munitions have been seen as “bill payers” for other programs.
The Pentagon needs to provide a consistent demand signal for the number of weapons it plans to buy over time to allow defense industry to build sufficient production capacity to meet this demand and have some excess to surge if needed.
You’d think having every weapon line itemed in the budget would prevent this outcome, but perhaps it gives the green light to short-sighted meddling. The recommendation seems to sum up to: increase the budget of munitions and missiles, fix the FYDP plan vs. reality mismatch, and use multi-year contracting authority.
I tend to agree, but I would add that Congress needs to fully fund the Army Organic Industrial Base program, even projects those with less than 50% of plans drawn up. They need to expand GOGO facilities as well as GOCO and COCO. They need something like a CHIPS Act for energetics and upstream components. I don’t think that contractors and supply chains can be expected to “work themselves out” by buying a bunch of PGMs.
Munitions requirements
The authors also provide a useful table of the number of munitions employed and the proportion that was PGM. They range from 228K in Desert Storm and just 7% PGMs to 116K in 2014-2019 Inherent Resolve, mostly PGMs. Ukraine reportedly is using 5-6K munitions of all types per day.
I think DoD should operate under the assumption that it will use 10x the number of munitions on a daily basis as Ukraine. And that could be sustained for quite a period of time.
For example, in Gettysburg the Union Soldiers went through 30K artillery rounds over three days. In the four days of the Battle of St. Mihiel during World War I, the United States expended more than one million rounds.
President FDR proclaimed the United States military would build capacity to 50,000 aircraft per year after Germany invaded France and the low countries, but before the United States was at war. I think something similar is required today. An almost absurd production quota for munitions, but probably also one for autonomous combat vehicles of all types. Focusing on the upstream inputs provides options to production later should loitering munitions really come into their own.
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