Report: Biden Defense Department’s Weapon Supply Is Unprepared for a Conflict With China

Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales Program is “risk-averse”, inefficient and slow,” says a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley / Getty Images

The Department of Defense is supplied with weapons by the armaments industry “not adequately prepared” for any major regional conflicts, including a war with China in the Taiwan Strait, according to a study Center for Strategic and International Studies, (CSIS).

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank found through a series of war games that the United States would quickly run out of munitions, particularly long-range, precision-guided munitions, if it ever faced a Taiwan Strait conflict. Its weaknesses include outdated military contracting procedures, slow bureaucracy, and slow administrative processes. “extremely difficult for the United States to sustain a protracted conflict.”

The report took aim at The Foreign Military Sales program under President Joe Biden for failing to adapt to the current security environment and remaining “risk-averse, inefficient, and sluggish.” CSIS senior vice president Seth Jones, who wrote the report, is concerned that the problems with the industrial base are hurting the country’s ability to deter conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.

“How do you effectively deter if you don’t have sufficient stockpiles of the kinds of munitions you’re going to need for a China-Taiwan Strait kind of scenario?” Jones told the Wall Street Journal. “The bottom line is the defense industrial base, in my judgment, is not prepared for the security environment that now exists.”

These major weaknesses have been exposed by the Biden government’s military support to Ukraine, reports the study. The $27 billion worth of military supplies the United States has doled out to Ukraine has drained the U.S. munitions inventory to low levels, and defense manufacturers are not equipped to replenish them quickly, the Journal reports:

According to the study, the number of Javelin shoulder fired missiles that were sent to Ukraine in August last year is equivalent to approximately seven years of production, based on fiscal 2022 production rate.

The study found that the number provided to Kyiv by antiaircraft Stinger system is approximately equal to the total number of systems exported over the past twenty years. The study also found that the U.S. military has reduced its own supply of ammunition in 155 mm to Ukraine, which is now low, with Washington sending more than 1 million rounds.

“The U.S. Department of Defense in coordination