America Must Remedy Its Dangerous Lack of Munitions Planning

has not KEY TAKEAWAYS Sbought and built enough munitions to keep pace with the military operations the President The Pentagon was caught off guard by and Congress have tasked the Department of Defense the amount of artillery shells needed by (DOD) with conducting. [...] Based on a 2019 presentation by the Department of the Air Force, by the end of the operation, U. [...] The use of multiyear procurement authorities in the FY 2024 National Defense Authori- zation Act is an important first step, but the amounts of munitions procured still fall well short of what the United States military would need were it to engage in conflict in the Indo–Pacific (which means that the U. [...] The National Defense Strategy (NDS) identifies China as the primary challenge to the United States, and the Indo–Pacific as the primary arena of competition. [...] One minute, the military is being told to pivot to Asia and focus on China, the next minute the President is telling the Pentagon to empty its warehouses of munitions and send them to Ukraine for a conflict deemed second- ary in the NDS, all while China continues its military build-up.