The war in Ukraine has shown that the U.S. must prepare for new forms of conflict and do a better job rapidly integrating new technology and capabilities with older systems, the chair of a panel examining the National Defense Strategy said Tuesday.
Former Rep. Jane Harman, chair of the congressionally mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy and a California Democrat, said she visited a drone factory during a recent visit to Ukraine. The workers constructed the casings using a 3-D printer and ordered the software from Amazon.
“They can produce a drone for $350. I don’t think the Pentagon can produce a cup of coffee for $350,” Ms. Harman said.
Ms. Harman and commission vice chair Ambassador Eric Edelman spoke about the report with the Defense Writers Group a day before their Wednesday testimony to the House Armed Services Committee about the National Defense Strategy.
Their bipartisan commission, in a scathing report released in July, said the U.S. is not prepared for the large-scale war it waged against Germany and Japan nearly 80 years ago.
And China is outpacing the U.S. and has largely negated its past military advantages in the Western Pacific, the commission argued.
“The U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat,” the report stated. “It needs to do a better job of incorporating new technology at scale; field more and higher-capability platforms, software, and munitions; and deploy innovative concepts to employ them together better.”
Drones have proven to be vital for Ukraine in its war against invading Russia, both in providing Kyiv with a low-cost aerial intelligence-gathering capability and in destroying Russian military targets. They plan to eventually produce at least one million drones every year, Ms. Harman said.
“That’s the standard we have to be moving toward,” she said.
Executives from top defense technology companies warned Congress this week that China is outperforming the U.S. in mass production of drones. Meanwhile, Ukraine is losing about 10,000 small intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones every month.
“When I look at what they’re losing per month and what we currently have in our inventory, I think ‘My goodness, we would last less than two months in a great power conflict,” Skydio global government president W. Mark Valentine told lawmakers on Monday. “And I just personally think that’s unacceptable.”
Mr. Valentine, whose company says it is America’s leading drone manufacturer, called for a surge of American drones into Ukraine, which he said would enhance the industry’s ability to meet U.S. requirements in the event of a future conflict.
However, the National Defense Strategy Commission warns that the U.S. defense industry can’t meet the vital equipment, technology and munitions needs of the United States, its allies, and partners. A protracted conflict — especially in multiple regions — would require a much greater capacity to produce, maintain and replenish weapons and munitions stocks, and drones.
“We just don’t have the defense industrial base to sustain that kind of production. We need major investment in the defense industrial base to be able to surge production when we need it,” Mr. Edelman said. “We should be the ‘Arsenal of Democracy,’ but I don’t think we can be the Arsenal of Democracy alone.”
• Ryan Lovelace contributed to this report.