Defense manufacturers will struggle to quickly replace the stores of weapons the U.S. and other nations are providing Ukraine, witnesses told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
The Defense Department has likely sent about a quarter of its available inventory of Stinger ground-to-air missiles, said Ellen Lord, who served as the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer during the Trump administration. And because government demand has been inconsistent over the years, the companies in the defense industrial base will take time to make more at peak production levels, she said.
“We cannot, within the next couple of years, produce more because we have a problem with the government not paying to maintain production capacity,” said Lord, who is the former CEO of Textron Systems, which makes combat vehicles and drones among other defense products. During lulls, equipment is not inspected, tested and maintained to the same standards, and gaps can emerge in the supply chain, she said.
