America reflecting on a past war, feeling confident but not secure with its place in the world, families suffering economically, rising trade wars, isolationistic pressures building, debates about the need to stockpile critical minerals while the winds of a new war are blowing across the Atlantic and the Pacific.
In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia, Japan was at war with China by 1937, Germany invaded Poland September 1, 1939, followed by the United Kingdom and France declaring war on Germany the same month. Beginning in 1938 the U.S. began quietly supplying the United Kingdom with military capability while debating how best to prepare for a global war. Today we have the first war in Europe since the end of World War II with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia who has stated they desire to recover lands lost since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Such a statement implies an interest in seizing nations now members of the NATO Alliance to fulfill this vision. We have conflict in the middle east and the Chinese damaging Philippine vessels and injuring sailors. Global instability has exploded in the past couple of years, and this poses a threat to American security and global influence that if not address through strength in military readiness will have serious consequences for America and our Allies.
Soon after World War I, leading American scientists sought to educate industrialists and those in government on the necessity of having a national minerals plan. One of the country’s leading geologists, Charles K. Leith, proposed a world institute to manage raw materials. Teamed with leading experts of the period such as Josiah E. Spurr, who had become President of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, H. Foster Bain, then Director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, and George Otis Smith, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey established what became a blue-ribbon panel to research and write a minerals plan by first inventorying all domestic minerals resources. Leith and his colleagues urged the formation of a national stockpile to reduce if not eliminate our dependency on the Soviet Union.
The Honorable Charles I. Faddis, Congressman from Pennsylvania sponsored legislation in 1936 to obtain strategic materials. The Faddis legislation became law (H.R. 1608), through the Naval Appropriations Act of 1938. Through the Act, the Navy received a small appropriation of $3.5 million for the first stockpile of strategic and critical materials accumulated by a U.S. military service in preparation for a national emergency. Building on this investment, legislation for a National Stockpile occurred on 7 June 1939, passed by the 76th Congress, and signed by the President called the Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Act of 1939 (Public Law 117). This law enabled “the acquisition of stocks of certain strategic and critical materials of which the natural resources of the United States were deficient or insufficiently developed to supply the industrial, military, and naval needs of the country for common defense and to encourage the development of mines and deposits of these materials within the United States.”
Congress enacted legislation on 2 June 1940 (P.L. 664) giving the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which was originally formed in 1932 in response to the Great Depression, tremendous powers, and authority to produce, acquire, and transport strategic and critical materials. This gave the President the power to create, through subsidiary corporations to the RFC, the Rubber Reserve Company, and the Metals Reserve Company, established on 28 June 1940, for the purposes of stockpiling. August 1940, the RFC created the Defense Plant Corporation and the Defense Supplies Corporation assisting with the production of war supplies made from the large purchases of strategic and critical raw materials authorized in legislation.
Congress chartered the Defense Plant Corporation the task of expanding production capabilities for military equipment in anticipation of war. Its charter permitted both the building and equipping of new facilities and the expansion of existing facilities. It also had the authority to enlist the help of industrial organizations in establishing and operating facilities in the public interest. From 1939 to the end of World War II, the Defense Plant Corporation built many government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facilities, some of which are still operating today. At the same time, arsenals and navy yards were expanded and worked two or three shifts a day producing weapons. With the help of government agencies, many U.S. industrial sectors converted to military production, incorporating new manufacturing methodologies that enabled the massive production of war equipment. Automobile and truck production lines were converted to military production, existing commercial shipyards were expanded, and new ones were built. All this leading to the establishment, post WWII, of the Defense Production Act we operate under today.
As noted earlier, the fundamental global threats and domestic challenges we face today mirror many of the challenges America faced in 1938. We have war in Europe for the first time since the end of WWII with the unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine. America and its Allies have mobilized support by depleting national capability to equip Ukrainian forces to oust the Russian aggressors. America and its military industrial complex face the challenges of quickly ramping up production of critical capability to resupply U.S. depleted readiness, to resupply Allied depleted readiness, to continue supplying Ukraine with capability while also supplying Israel in their conflict. What we have learned over the past two years is that we today, as in 1938, do not have the capability to pivot to success as quickly as required and we must begin to act as though we are in a crisis and that there is a need now to act with purpose.
America must reach across the aisle to harmonize our response to our national readiness deficiencies. We absolutely must pass annual defense appropriations on time and do so as a national security matter that is not bound by politics. Continuing resolutions tie the hands of our forces and those who enable their success to include our military industrial complex. We need firm, well defined and stable requirements backed with sufficient and timely government funding to allow our industries to innovate and produce at speed. We need support for multiyear commitments for key capabilities to stabilize production and to provide the confidence our industries need to expand facilities and increase production. To do this in industry is an enormous commitment that cannot be taken lightly. Our industries need to know that when they commit to meet our urgent national security needs that our Congress and Administrations are equally committed year over year. We need to stop debating mineral dependencies and like 1938, work to pass legislation to invest in stockpiling and we need the government to approve mining permits to achieve independence. And we need to invest in advancing national mining and mineral processing on a scale that makes an impact now. Whatever it takes, the Administration and the Congress must roll up their sleeves, join forces and hammer out a plan to put America militarily back on its feet and to do so with urgency. We owe this to our citizens, our allies and especially those who volunteer to serve in our defense.
Keith Webster is the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Defense and Aerospace Council (DAC) and the Federal Acquisition Council (FAC) and vice president at the U.S. Chamber.
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