Pentagon proxy calls for freer rein to stockpile US, Allied arms as threats mount

(Originally published June 6 in “What in the World“) Germany is shoring up its defense with the purchase of 20 Eurofighter combat aircraft, adding to the 38 it has already ordered.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the purchase at the Berlin Air Show, underscoring his government’s commitment to boosting national defense amid heightened security concerns since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov earlier this week warned of “fatal consequences” to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to join other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in allowing Ukraine to use their weapons against targets inside Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up Wednesday with a warning that Russia might supply long-range weapons to other countries so they can target NATO.

Ukrainian forces are already taking advantage of Biden’s newfound latitude, earlier this week using a Himars launcher to destroy a Russian surface-to-air missile battery in Russia’s Belgorod region.

But some analysts worry that Russia’s upcoming naval exercises in the Caribbean could become part of its tit-for-tat response to Biden’s move. Russian warships will reportedly make port calls in Venezuela and in Cuba, where China is building a military facility. The rationale for China’s move has always been to reciprocate for the buildup of U.S. and allied forces in what China considers its own coastal areas: this week, for example, Italy is sending a carrier strike force to the Pacific to join counterparts from the U.S., Britain, France, and India.

Speaking of tit-for-tat, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened a “very intense” reprisal against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon even as Israeli forces launched a new offensive against Hamas in central Gaza. Netanyahu’s threat against Hezbollah comes after the Iran-backed group launched a rocket and drone barrage into northern Israel earlier this week.

As these wars rage on and tensions between the U.S., China, and Russia continue to rise, Washington needs to aggressively ramp up production and stockpiling of munitions, Thomas Mahnken argues in a new piece for Foreign Affairs. Mahnken heads a non-profit think tank funded largely by the Defense Dept., the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and is a professor at Washington, D.C.-based Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Dire shortages of ammunition in Ukraine, he argues, have highlighted the need for larger and steadier production by the U.S. defense industry. Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act enabled the Pentagon to make multi-year purchase orders and adjust spending for inflation.

But Congress’ delay in passing the defense budget earlier this year highlighted how efforts by the U.S. and its allies to mount increasing opposition to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia remains vulnerable to their own domestic politics. Domestic divisions already stand to delay passage of the new, $833 billion defense appropriations bill for 2025. The Republican-controlled House defense spending panel is working on a draft that would block the President from withholding any arms transfers to Israel, but drops $300 million in weapons funding for Ukraine.

To solve this problem, Mahnken argues that his financial backers at the Pentagon must be given even freer rein to order up weapons for America’s allies:

Washington must do more than simply make lots of munitions. It must also get better at creating a seamless distribution process. Domestic and foreign orders of American arms are fulfilled through the same assembly lines, but procedurally, foreign military sales are segregated from U.S. ones, with the former controlled by the State Department and the latter by the Defense Department. This division can make it hard to adjust supply to meet demand. Bureaucracy makes the foreign military sales process slow and cumbersome. And even when such sales are approved, allies are generally sent to the back of the line, where they can wait years to obtain weapons that they have already paid for and that may be essential to deterring imminent attacks. To solve this problem, the United States must streamline and speed up the process for foreign clients. It should allow the Defense Department to include foreign sales as part of the demand signal it sends to industry and cut back on rules that keep allies waiting behind U.S. contracts.