[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 116-91]
MODERNIZATION OF THE
CONVENTIONAL AMMUNITION
PRODUCTION INDUSTRIAL BASE
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
SEPTEMBER 22, 2020
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
42-144 WASHINGTON : 2021
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey, Chairman
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut PAUL COOK, California
RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona MATT GAETZ, Florida
SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California DON BACON, Nebraska
ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland JIM BANKS, Indiana
FILEMON VELA, Texas PAUL MITCHELL, Michigan
XOCHITL TORRES SMALL, New Mexico, MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
Vice Chair DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia
JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine
ANTHONY BRINDISI, New York
Elizabeth Griffin, Professional Staff Member
Jesse Tolleson Professional Staff Member
Caroline Kehrli, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Hartzler, Hon. Vicky, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces........... 2
Norcross, Hon. Donald, a Representative from New Jersey,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces......... 1
WITNESSES
Daly, GEN Edward M., USA, Commanding General, Army Materiel
Command........................................................ 4
Jette, Hon. Bruce D., Assistant Secretary of the Army for
Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, Department of the Army.. 5
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Jette, Hon. Bruce D., joint with GEN Edward M. Daly.......... 33
Norcross, Hon. Donald........................................ 31
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mr. Bacon.................................................... 50
Mrs. Hartzler................................................ 49
Mr. Norcross................................................. 49
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Golden................................................... 53
MODERNIZATION OF THE CONVENTIONAL AMMUNITION PRODUCTION INDUSTRIAL BASE
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, September 22, 2020.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:05 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Donald Norcross
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DONALD NORCROSS, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM NEW JERSEY, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND
LAND FORCES
Mr. Norcross. The hearing will come to order.
Before the hearing officially begins, we have a few
housekeeping notes. Even though right now nobody is
participating remotely, we still want to make sure that the
rules are set out and we have a full understanding.
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Finally, I have designated a committee staff member to, if
necessary, mute unrecognized members' microphones to cancel any
inadvertent background noise that may disrupt the proceedings.
Now we can begin.
Today, the Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee meets in a
hybrid session to receive testimony from Army witnesses on the
state of the Nation's conventional ammunition production and
efforts to modernize that process.
The topic of today's hearing is intended to be a start, an
assessment, where we are, what I hope will be a productive
conversation between the committee and the Army on improving
the state of conventional ammunition production facilities
across the country.
The ammunition that our Army trains and takes into combat
comes from production lines scattered across the great
heartland of this Nation. In fact, most of it is manufactured
in the same facilities that produced the ammunition used to
bring victories to the allies in World War II--shocking to me
and certainly anybody listening. Those facilities look, operate
much like they did in the 1940s.
Producing ammunition is no easy task. Often, it is a job
that--very careful and steady attention to detail. Obviously,
the downsides are tremendous. You are dealing with explosives
and chemical components. In order to ensure safety and security
for the workforce, they must be supported with modern
facilities that can do the job. Modern production processes are
available. We need the will to assess and to do it.
Many of the materials going in the ammunition production
are foreign-sourced or single-sourced or sometimes both.
Supply-chain disruption is an unacceptable risk, and we can't
do it.
So why, then, are fundamentally essential functions of the
defense manufacturing done in museum-like conditions? What
needs to be done is to improve this process. We will have that
discussion. How can Congress assist the Army in this task? And
how would these facilities meet the needs of a military in a
true national emergency? These questions will be the focus of
today's discussion.
Today, we are pleased to have once again Dr. Bruce Jette,
the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics
and Technology, as well as General Edward Daly, Commanding
General of Army Materiel Command. We look forward to their
observations, their ideas on how to modernize and improve
reliability on the ammunition production.
But, first, I turn to my friend, the ranking member for the
TAL [Tactical Air and Land Forces] Subcommittee, Mrs. Hartzler,
for any opening remarks.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Norcross can be found in the
Appendix on page 31.]
STATEMENT OF HON. VICKY HARTZLER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND
FORCES
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Conventional ammunition and associated industrial base have
tended to be an afterthought at times when discussing the
defense budget, and we have seen where ammunition procurement
accounts have been used as bill payers in the past. There is a
tendency to take for granted that we will always have a
responsive and resilient ammunition industrial base capable of
rapidly surging to meet operational demands.
The COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic has
amplified a problem that has been prevalent for quite some
time: that the defense industrial base, especially at the
supply-chain level, is fragile and may not be as resilient as
we need it to be. This includes the Army ammunition industrial
base, where we see many single points of failure and supply-
chain dependency on overseas sources for many critical
materials.
So I am very pleased that the chairman is holding this
hearing today so that we can better understand what actions the
Army is taking, as the single manager of conventional
ammunition, to modernize this critical industrial base.
I want to work with you both to ensure we have a resilient
ammunition industrial base that is modernized and affordable,
as well as ensure we have a healthy stockpile that can serve as
insurance for Army readiness and credible deterrence.
Today, I plan to focus primarily on the status of the
government-owned, contractor-operated Army ammunition plants.
There are five of these critical facilities; that includes Lake
City, located in Independence, Missouri. These plants are vital
to nearly all munition programs, and most have been around,
like the chairman said, since World War II, and many are
considered to be single points of failure.
Over the past 3 years, the Army budget request has averaged
approximately $455.6 million per year to address modernization
efforts for all five of these facilities. Despite this increase
and steady-state funding, there still appears to be significant
upgrades needed for manufacturing, safety, and environmental
issues, among others.
I am wondering if there is a significant discrepancy
between documented need and planned investment to sufficiently
address all five facilities. And I expect our witnesses today
to address this concern.
So, in closing, I want to thank our witnesses for their
dedicated service to this Nation, for your support of every
soldier and each of their families, and I look forward to
hearing your testimony.
And I would add, in reading your biographies, I am sure
West Point is very proud of both of you. So thank you for your
longtime service to this Nation.
I yield back.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
Interesting, in my district, directly across from downtown
Philadelphia, the Delaware River, and we were home to three
manufacturers from DuPont, who made all the powders back during
the Second World War. They have all long since shut, and they
have a legacy issue there that is just millions to clean up. So
we have to take care of what we have.
Obviously, when they built buildings back in the 1940s,
they didn't know of many of the contamination issues that we
are being faced with today. But it is also how we store it, how
we transport it, the production. These are all things that we
are looking to hear your views on.
So I understand our witnesses have prepared a joint
statement. Without objection, we will make that part of the
record.
I also understand, at the Army's request, General Daly will
open with summary remarks. If we can keep it somewhere around 5
minutes, because I think we are still at 2 o'clock for votes.
General Daly. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Norcross. Terrific. General Daly, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF GEN EDWARD M. DALY, USA, COMMANDING GENERAL, ARMY
MATERIEL COMMAND
General Daly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, Chairman Norcross, Ranking Member Hartzler,
and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the
opportunity to testify on the Army's ammunition organic
industrial base, the OIB.
On behalf of Secretary McCarthy and General McConville,
thank you for your strong support and continued commitment to
our soldiers, our Department of Army civilians, families, and
veterans. And I can tell you that I am honored to be here today
with Dr. Jette.
Today's ammunition OIB includes 16 plants, centers, and
depots, split between GOGOs [government-owned, government-
operated] and GOCOs [government-owned, contractor-operated],
down from the height of 64 locations during World War II, and
with plans to decrease to 14 in the next few years. With a
workforce of more than 11,000 skilled artisans, these sites
produce, store, distribute, surveil, and demilitarize
conventional ammunition for the joint force.
As you know, the purpose of the ammunition OIB is to
support current munitions readiness, maintain surge capacity
and capability, and modernize to support future weapons
platforms. And we are successfully meeting requirements in all
three areas.
Army senior leader priorities are clear: People are the
centerpiece by which we achieve readiness, modernization, and
reform. And, unequivocally, our ammunition industrial base is
tied to each of the Army priorities.
I take my roles and responsibilities very seriously based
on the command authorities given to me through title 10, by the
Secretary of the Army, through Army regulations, which include
distribution, storage, surveillance, de-mil, as well as mission
command of depot infrastructure and energy and environmental
programs across the ammunition OIB.
My relationship with Dr. Jette in support of his designated
roles both as the Army's acquisition executive and the senior
manager for conventional ammunition, the SMCA, is critical.
Together, we work collaboratively on manufacturing and
production. Dr. Jette and I are 100 percent synchronized in
support of the Army priorities in our roles and
responsibilities and authorities. There is no daylight between
us.
As you will see in our 2020 SMCA report, which will follow
later this year, we have continued success in production and
industrial base management, stockpile management, and
distribution management.
With respect to the industrial base modernization, we have
made significant investments--more than $3.2 billion since
2009--in upgrades to facilities, infrastructure, and operations
equipment.
A few key examples include: an investment of nearly $400
million in a new nitrocellulose facility at Radford, which is a
base ingredient in the majority of DOD [Department of Defense]
propellants; more than $200 million in a new nitric acid
facility at Holston that recycles and reconstitutes critical
materials used in insensitive munitions explosives; and at Lake
City, upgrades for processes for primers, cartridges, and
bullets, with 21st-century technology such as computer program
logic, robotics, maintenance analytics, and prognostic sensors;
and continuing planning for the new construction in support of
the Next Generation Squad Weapon.
The bottom line is that, while these facilities are
successfully meeting our current requirements, we must continue
to invest in modernization now to ensure our ability to meet
future large-scale combat operation requirements.
Dr. Jette and I are absolutely committed to a
comprehensive, revolutionary, holistic, 15-year modernization
strategy across our ammunition plants and facilities. And
although we have made significant progress in investments, we
still have a $14 billion to $16 billion cost to fully modernize
our ammunition OIB to a 21st-century capability.
We are refining our priorities that focus our modernization
efforts on those projects that are most critical to support
current readiness and posture capabilities for 2035 and beyond.
Safety is one of our top priorities, and our envisioned end
state is state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and machinery
that have built-in safety standards across the ammunition
industrial base. We are also committed to a protection of our
critical capabilities and reducing our single points of failure
as well as decreasing reliance on foreign suppliers.
Distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you again
for allowing me to appear before you. Your continued support is
enabling the Army to maintain and modernize our ammo facilities
and deliver readiness to the joint force.
I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
Dr. Jette.
STATEMENT OF HON. BRUCE D. JETTE, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE
ARMY FOR ACQUISITION, LOGISTICS AND TECHNOLOGY, DEPARTMENT OF
THE ARMY
Secretary Jette. Chairman Norcross, Ranking Member
Hartzler, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee on
Tactical Air and Land Forces, good afternoon. Thank you for
your invitation to discuss the modernization of the Army's
conventional ammunition production industrial base.
I sincerely appreciate General Daly's opening remarks and
am in complete agreement. I take very seriously the acquisition
and logistics responsibilities of my job as ASA(ALT) [Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and
Technology] As such, I believe there is a real opportunity to
better relate these two facets of this position within the Army
ammunition enterprise.
As General Daly has mentioned, today's Army ammunition
production capability is comprised of a network of government-
owned, contractor-operated, GOCOs; government-owned,
government-operated, GOGOs; and contractor-owned, contractor-
operated, COCOs, ammunition sites.
I would like to focus my brief remarks on the challenges we
face in the Army's GOCOs ammunition production capability in
the United States and related supply-chain issues, though, as
General Daly mentioned, most of what I will talk about in the
GOCO sense also applies in the GOGO sense.
As you know, most of today's GOCO buildings and
infrastructures were built and produced during World War II.
And across many decades and administrations, the concept of
modernizing these facilities has stayed within the limits of
keeping production capabilities safe within specific
established procedures and sustaining the operations within an
existing footprint.
This is understandable, as ammunition production is a
dangerous endeavor, and the safety of our workforce has been
and will continue to be our highest priority. I think that,
given that, we have been reticent to bring our production
facilities into the 21st century. But we are at an inflection
point, knowing that technology offers true modernization
pathways that can significantly improve both safety and
transform the production capability.
Funding new facilities that are designed to embrace today's
technology will improve workforce safety, enable environmental
compliance--water, energy efficiency, conservation and
resiliency--and establish more efficient and effective
production capacity, resulting in a greater return on
investment. To that end, we have embarked on an aggressive
endeavor to establish a new, transformational vision to reset
our modernization of the GOCOs.
We must also address our reliance on foreign supply for
many materials which support ammunition production, some of
which are sourced from China or locations that supply lines can
be threatened by adversaries.
As part of developing an updated GOCO modernization
strategy, we are conducting in-depth analysis into sources of
supply, assessing single points of failure, and determining
whether it is in our collective national interest to invest in
secondary sources of supply, whether that be domestic
production or through international partners or both.
Mr. Chairman, General Daly and I are completely in sync on
the need to shift our thinking on how we modernize the Army
ammunition plants. Although it is difficult to modernize the
ammunition industrial base while maintaining production
continually to meet our current warfighter needs, there is
greater risk in not doing so.
There will be costs and regulatory implications we will
need to navigate. This strategy will require sufficient,
predictable, sustainable, and timely funding to ensure a
successful outcome, and we look forward to working with
Congress to realize this vision.
Thank you for your support of the Army and its Army
ammunition industrial base for both our current investment as
well as as we transform to modernize for the future. We look
forward to your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Secretary Jette and
General Daly can be found in the Appendix on page 33.]
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
General, you mentioned something in your remarks, that you
were closing some facilities. Without even going into why you
might be closing them, if we are looking at a single point of
failure and we are narrowing where these facilities are by
number, doesn't that increase some of the risk?
General Daly. Mr. Chairman, so there are two facilities, as
you know, in particular, that we are closing. One is based on
BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure]. But we have looked at
that, and we don't think that, based on the critical
capabilities that reside in the organic industrial base, that
the closure of those facilities will affect our vulnerabilities
or increase our vulnerability with regard to ammunition.
Mr. Norcross. So is it the production capacity or the
amount of stockpiled material that is the bigger issue?
General Daly. So one of the locations that we are closing
was not a production and manufacturing facility; it was just a
storage facility. And it is in mothballs and has been for the
last couple years.
The second one, based on BRAC, is related to chemical
munitions stockpile reduction. And so, once that mission is
complete, that will close in 2023.
Mr. Norcross. So if you could just walk us through how you
diffuse the risk when the production facility is there and the
raw material, which some of it, very hazardous and explosive.
How do you diffuse that from that single point of failure?
Because, back in the 1940s, some of the things that we were
concerned about overhead are now readily available for those
who might want to disrupt it. Stockpiles, foreign material, how
do you address that?
Secretary Jette. So, Mr. Chairman, let me address some of
the single point of failure.
There are risks of concentrating particular production at a
particular facility, in a single facility alone. Holston, for
example, is the primary place where we produce most of our
explosives used in bombs and other similar things. The facility
itself is designed in such a manner that the production lines
are tolerant. If one is damaged and incapable of producing,
other lines can pick up some of the load. And there is enough
space to produce additional lines at that facility. It still
does have all of the production capability concentrated in one
place.
We have a similar issue for propellant, which is the
material that goes into bullets and ultimately also into rocket
engines and motors.
So Radford, Holston, those two plants, in particular, are
the single points of failure if they were to be limited in some
capacity. But the historic approach has been to save money
overall in the defense industrial base and reduce the number of
places. As we said, from World War II, there were 70-some
facilities, and now we are down to 14.
The only way to get around that is to return other places
to production. And, in that case, we are not going to be
necessarily as economical as we are trying to be right now to
keep our production numbers up.
Mr. Norcross. So you talked about $3.2 billion as your
capital plan moving forward. I am not sure how many years. I
assume that means there was an assessment done across the
board. What year was the last assessment made that you are
driving the plan off of?
Secretary Jette. So, Mr. Chairman, the base plan is the
United States Army Ammunition Industrial Base Strategic Plan
2025. It was published in February of 2016.
The plan's fundamental approach to the problem is to take a
look at the production requirements of the Department of
Defense, what the responsibilities are of those facilities, and
then to try and make sure that those facilities stay, number
one, safe--because if capabilities go downhill and we do find
that there are procedures that are not as safe as we think they
should be, we should fix those.
So there are various things we do to make the plants
better, but we don't deviate a great deal from the
methodologies we have used in the past. So we are just
improving what we have been doing essentially since World War
II in those plants. That is the plan. That is the one we are
working to. That is the one that is POM'ed [program objective
memorandum].
What we have done in this past year is take a more
reflective view of things. And I know I have had an opportunity
to talk separately to a number of your staff after some visits
to those facilities and say: We have technologies which are not
part of improvements--for example, right now, people still
handle munitions by hand, whereas we can use robotics and
automation and other methodologies to handle them. We can get
people separated from the explosives. They are doing it safely.
We are improving the safety conditions by those methods, but we
have the technology to get them out of the facilities.
So the question then becomes, how do we improve the plants
in such a way that it becomes more dependable, more reliable,
and, above all, safer for the operations by the people who can
transform from handlers of munitions to technicians at the
facilities?
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
Just one comment, and then we will turn it over to Mrs.
Hartzler.
The idea of making it safer for the workers, there is no
question about that. But because these plants have grown up
since the 1940s, they have a great relationship with their
employees. You eliminate many of those jobs, there is a
potential of that support also going there.
Mrs. Hartzler.
Mrs. Hartzler. Sure.
Well, surge capacity is very, very important. And I know it
is tricky, as you manage the ammunition plants, because you
have to have the capability to surge but, at the same time, you
may not need it all the time. And so I guess my first question
is, what actions are you taking to improve the surge capacity
and resiliency of the ammunition production industrial base?
And then, secondly, can you walk us through the extent to
which the industrial base is dependent on overseas sources for
ammunition material?
You mentioned in your opening remarks that you are
currently doing an assessment to look at the vulnerabilities.
We were provided with some slides ahead of time. This is just
showing, in China, all the different chemicals and source items
that originate and how they are used in various aspects of
ammunition production.
So if you could kind of expound on where you are at in that
assessment and when you think you will be able to make those
decisions and secure those secondary sources for those.
And just in your testimony, written testimony, twice you
mentioned, at the same time, we must implement a strategy to
reduce single-point failures, reduce dependence on
international, sole-source suppliers, some of which are not our
allies, and develop international partnerships.
So I guess my question is, along with this, is there a
strategy? Are you in the process of just kind of assessing
things and then you are going to write the strategy?
So thank you.
Secretary Jette. Let me see if I can get this in before my
clock stops.
So the first question about----
Mrs. Hartzler. Surge.
Secretary Jette [continuing]. Surge production. The largest
challenge to surge production that we have had so far and
recently was because the Air Force, in its engagements with
ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], used quite a few more
bombs they had.
So the first place we went is, the Air Force uses something
called AFX [Air Force Explosive] in the bombs. It is a form of
RDX [Research Department Explosive]. RDX is produced at
Holston. And we had a capability to do 8 million pounds of it.
And what we realized is we--that was our surge level, and
really now our surge level is 15 million pounds. So we have
invested a significant amount of money to increase that
facility and be able to bring that production capability up to
the 15 million pounds.
To compensate for that, rather than impact the operational
capabilities--we want to keep the RDX in the bombs that the Air
Force is using; it is a safer munition--we have--you can also
use TNT [trinitrotoluene]. TNT and RDX are similar performers.
The problem is, TNT is not as safe in operation as is RDX. So
the TNT is used in more benign training environments now. So
the bombs--we mitigate the quantity problem right now by the
use of TNT as a substitute for training bombs, and we use the
RDX for the actual operational materials.
So it gives us a breather. We haven't missed any of our
production requirements. And we are continuing to meet the Air
Force needs and the operational needs.
For overseas sources, I would like to offer an opportunity,
if possible, with the committee to have a classified discussion
separately on some of the details of that, because----
Mrs. Hartzler. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette [continuing]. I really think that some of
those details probably should not be discussed in open forum.
But, on the other hand, I will tell you that we have
detailed analysis down to sub-sub-suppliers, four and five
layers in some cases, knowing exactly where all of the
components for our munitions are coming from. It is really
impressive, how good the ammunition enterprise has gotten into
trying to work this.
However, that is fine, but we have two paths forward that
we are working on for these unique materials, and one of them
is alternatives. So I will give you a simple example: lead-
based primers, primers used to cause the detonation of the
rounds. Lead was in the primers. It is not much. They are
small. When you fire a gun, you are in close proximity, you
have lead in the vaporous air, you are inhaling lead dust.
So, for health reasons and various other reasons, we
decided we wanted to get away from lead-based primers and find
an alternative. So Picatinny did extensive work and is
continuing to do work on alternatives to lead-based primers so
that we can still accomplish the same purpose as a primer but
without using the same materials.
What we are doing is trying to take a look to the list that
you have in front of you and others, we are trying to do the
same thing by having the people who are the experts in the
chemistry and the objectives of the given chemistry we use,
find alternative methodologies to achieve the same outcome, and
then make sure that that is done with materials that we can
source from the United States.
A second approach is that some of the materials can be
sourced in the United States. It is a rather lengthy discussion
we should have about the challenges of producing materials.
DNAN [2,4-Dinitroanisole] is a fundamental component to the
artillery shells. We don't source any of it in the United
States. And we could, but we are not set up to do that right
now. It would take a decision to go on that path to make sure
that we can transition to it.
Let me hit the last one real quickly, the single point of
failure worldwide. So we have two approaches to this that we
are taking.
The fundamental approach is that I have asked the program
executive office [PEO] to work with all of the DOD staff, and
AMC [Army Materiel Command] in particular, on alternative
sources worldwide. So take a map, look at where we may have
challenges if we had to deploy forces, determine what other
ammunition sources of various types and calibers we might be
able to find.
Because ammunition is sourced elsewhere in the world by
other forces and would work well with our munitions
requirements. The problem is, we don't have contracts in place
for small quantities, where we can hold those potential
alternative manufacturing facilities accountable for the
quality standards that we want on our munitions.
So I have the PEO mapping that out right now so that it
comes to current, real, full-up rounds--artillery shells,
bullets, bombs, et cetera.
The second thing is that we are looking at those single
points of failure and determining how we can find alternative
sourcing methodologies here in the United States and what it
will take. And I think that that is part of this transition
plan, transformational plan, is to generate an ability to
produce some of these chemicals which are not being produced in
the United States.
And this is where, in my comments, in my opening comments,
I said it will take financial decision making and regulatory
decision making. There is a balance. Most of the reasons we
don't make them have to do with regulatory requirements that
make it very onerous and the financials that it would take to
be able to produce them here in the United States.
Mrs. Hartzler. Great. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Norcross. Mr. Carbajal.
Mr. Carbajal. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Jette, in your testimony, you state that over 80
percent of Army Class A mishaps involving a fatality or
property damage greater than $2.5 million are the result of
human error.
What trends have you identified that contribute to these
errors? And while I understand there are long-term solutions
that include automation, in terms of automating the handling of
dangerous materials, what short-term steps are being taken to
address these errors?
Secretary Jette. This is one of the most important areas, I
think, that we really need to address, is making sure that we
take all the possibility of human error out of the equation.
As I said, we are essentially making the explosives in a
manner very much like we did in World War I, World War II in
some--World War I in some cases, World War II in others. We
literally have people standing under machines that are full of
1,500 pounds of molten explosive, drooling it into artillery
shells to fill them up, and then they push the carts out of the
way. We don't have automation. We don't have robotics systems.
The people have developed and the Ammunition Safety Board
have developed methodologies--tactics, techniques, and
procedures--to make sure that it is done as safely as possible
under those given design considerations. We do consistent and
continuous reviews of those processes and procedures. It
doesn't mean that there is not an unforeseen problem that we
couldn't encounter that could cause injury or death.
The vast majority--and I went back to see exactly--asked my
staff, tell me exactly what some--you know, we had a number--we
had 13 people injured at Radford last year. What does that
mean? Because, I mean, it could be anything from a slip and
fall to a serious injury that didn't cost a life but was close.
The vast majority of the injuries tend to be standard
industrial injuries. I am not diminishing that we need to
improve that--trips, falls, et cetera. That is part of the old
facilities that we have that make it difficult to avoid those
things.
The second piece is, we have been, I think, while not good
enough, consistently fairly good in trying to make sure that we
don't have any deaths in the facilities. We have had three
deaths on all of our facilities in the last 10 years.
One was due to--there was a backhoe operator who was
working in a pond for the Department of Energy that happened to
be on our facility. He somehow turned the backhoe upside-down
on himself, and he drowned. It didn't have anything to do with
the operation of the plant.
The other two, one had to do with clearing a vessel,
because we do these melt batch systems. He was clearing a
vessel with a wooden paddle, which had been done for years, and
it detonated----
Mr. Carbajal. Dr. Jette, I do appreciate the level of
detail you are giving me.
Secretary Jette. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carbajal. I am going to delve into my second question,
because I have limited time.
Secretary Jette. Okay.
Mr. Carbajal. The ongoing challenge facing government-
owned, contractor-operated Army munition plants, also known as
GOCOs, is that the specialized workforce is aging. This
challenge is not new or unique to ammunition production, as we
see it affecting shipyards and maintenance across the
Department.
Dr. Jette, how do we better recruit the future specialized
workforce? How are we connecting with technical schools that
produce the men and women who have the needed specialized skill
set?
Secretary Jette. Let me pass, if I could. The GOCOs are
fundamentally operated by General Daly, so if I could pass to
him.
General Daly. Congressman, thank you for that question.
First of all, I have to tell you that we appreciate
Congress' support in terms of direct hire authorities. Quite
frankly, that has been game-changer in terms of bringing
younger skilled workers into the workforce to posture for the
future.
In terms of as we modernize, the skill sets will migrate to
more technical in nature. So it won't be a reduction in
workforce, but it will be a change in the skill sets--an
artisan workforce that, quite frankly, was much more manual
labor.
And based on the investments that we have made--to your
point about safety, we have made some significant investments,
and we continue to do so--but robotics, computer program logic,
sensors, et cetera, will change the skill set that we need.
I feel very, very comfortable that we have the authorities.
And we are starting to look at partnerships with industry,
partnerships with academia to get interns in, to hire them, so
that they can be with us for decades to come, and it will
reduce the average age of the workforce.
Mr. Carbajal. Thank you, General.
I yield back.
Mr. Norcross. Mr. Bacon.
Mr. Bacon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate both of you
being here today.
My first question--I am going to try to do four quick
questions here--is for General Daly.
I understand, you know, we have this World War II ammo
production infrastructure. What does a modernized
infrastructure here look like to you?
General Daly. Congressman, thank you so much for that
question.
So, quite frankly, what we have done to this point--and, as
I mentioned in my opening statement, we have made significant
investments. But, quite frankly, I think, in terms of
revolutionary change, to make them 21st-century, what I would
envision--and we have done some of this, but it has been more
discrete than holistic--and that is really computer program
logic; it is robotics; it is maintenance analytics and
predictive sensors on equipment so we know when that equipment
is going down; continuous process management to get at quality;
and, in addition, plant layout and design, as Dr. Jette
mentioned earlier.
Mr. Bacon. Uh-huh.
General Daly. All that, in my mind, leads to improved
quality, increased production capability to get at the surge
point that Ranking Member Hartzler talked about, and then also
safety of the workforce.
Mr. Bacon. Thank you. I appreciate you putting a little
meat on the bones there.
And, Dr. Jette, you talked a little bit already with Mrs.
Hartzler on how China has some of these critical materials for
our ammo production. How hard is it going to be to diversify to
ensure that our supply base doesn't run strictly through China?
Secretary Jette. Sir, we are in the throes of trying to see
what it would take to be able to wean ourselves from all of the
materials.
The materials that we do get from China are not large-
volume materials. For example, the DNAN I spoke of earlier, we
get millions of pounds of that. That tends to come from India,
not China. However, there are small materials in detonators and
in pyrotechnics, these types of things.
In some cases, the sourcing is because that is where God
put the stuff. And so we don't dig much of it up here. They dig
it up over there. We have to bring it here, or we have to find
an alternative.
And, to this point, the price model has said there is no
reason to do this research. This is one reason why I think we
need some degree of a revitalization of our research and
development activities specifically with respect to our
energetics and our pyrotechnics.
That is not the nice solid answer I have given you--I got
it down in 5 years. We are having to chip through each one of
these and look at these: Can I source it somewhere else? Why
don't we produce it here? That generally is because of
facilities that don't exist or because it is going to be so
expensive to meet the pollution-abatement requirements that it
is unaffordable at the prices I can currently get it from from
overseas sources.
Mr. Bacon. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette. So we are having to work through those
issues in all of them.
Mr. Bacon. Well, we are glad you are digging through it,
because it is an important question. We don't want to be
dependent there in a time of crisis.
What is your mindset on depleted uranium? You know it is
very important for some of our ammos. Are there smart
alternative, or is this the best alternative?
Secretary Jette. So I am deviating a little bit. This is a
little bit outside of the ammunition per se. But I do
understand--being a materials scientist, I understand a bit
about depleted uranium. And if you really want to go into
detail, we probably need to go to a different setting as well.
Mr. Bacon. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette. Uranium is a hard material. Crystalline
structure makes it very strong. It is a high-temperature
material, so it is very good at penetrating a lot of mass. You
can get a lot of energy in that rod when it hits a target, and
it gets a great deal of penetration.
At the same time, it has toxicity issues. Radiation is
generally not a really relevant issue with depleted uranium.
You have removed the radioactive components from it. Though it
is, to a minor degree, present.
Tungsten and some other refractory materials provide
similar capability, and we have been looking at how we can
employ those in an alternative fashion to do them. We have sort
of started there, came over to DU [depleted uranium], and now
we are sort of looking back again at those.
And we can probably give you a little bit more detailed
discussion in a different forum.
Mr. Bacon. Okay. I will come back to you. It is an
interesting subject.
It is going to be hard to get this in in 30 seconds, but I
will give it a quick stab.
I know that we are trying to put as much lethality on an
individual warfighter that we can. Do we have the requirements
for the Individual Assault Munition solidified? It is pretty
much having a better weapon for a single soldier, shoulder-
fired. Have we solidified those requirements?
Secretary Jette. To give you a clean answer, I am going to
come back to you with one for the record. I don't believe that
there has been a significant change to the requirement----
Mr. Bacon. Okay.
Secretary Jette [continuing]. As I know it right now, and I
will just have to check on that.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 50.]
Mr. Bacon. Okay. Thank for your time.
Mr. Chair, I yield.
Mr. Norcross. Mr. Brown.
Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen,
for being here.
Sir, in your written testimony, you say that, to fully
modernize, improve, upgrade technology, et cetera, between
fiscal year 2021 and 2035, it would be roughly $14 billion to
$16 billion. Back of the envelope, that is about $1 billion a
year.
You mentioned earlier in your testimony today that, I
think, a strategy was outlined in 2016. What has been the
annual authorization and appropriation for ammunition
modernization to date, or at least since 2016 to date, roughly?
General Daly. Congressman, to this point, what has been
appropriated from 2016 to now between both the GOGOs and GOCOs,
it has been just under $2 billion.
Mr. Brown. Under $2 billion, 4 years, so considerably less
than the $1 billion per year.
Now, has that appropriation, has that been, to your
knowledge, above, the same, or below the President's budget
request?
General Daly. So, Congressman, quite frankly, that has been
right about what we have asked for in the President's budget.
When we talk about the $14 billion to $16 billion going
forward, as Dr. Jette mentioned, we are in the process of
refining that to focus on the most critical projects that will
yield the effects in the organic industrial base and bring them
into the 21st century and, as mentioned earlier, that focus on
reducing the vulnerabilities at our single points of failure
and, quite frankly, also at improving the capabilities that are
unique to the organic industrial base.
So I see that number refining over time, but that just
gives you a ballpark on what it had been as we take this new
approach.
I don't necessarily think it is going to get more--be more
expensive. I think it is more a case of a focused investment
strategy that we will bring forward through the Army leadership
into the President's budget.
Mr. Brown. Focused, a little bit more expensive than what
we have been paying to date, but--and I get it, but let me ask
you this question.
So, you know, I am hearing about technological--
incorporating better technology into the plants. It sounds like
there is some facility, in terms of realty upgrades. I am
assuming there is some workforce training that goes with that.
So can you briefly describe to the committee--I see two of
the three, sort of, critical players here, and the other one
being the Assistant Secretary for Installations, Environment
and Energy. Can you briefly describe to us how you worked
together to develop that master plan, that modernization
strategy?
General Daly. So, Congressman, great question.
I will tell you that, not only is there a great linkage
between Dr. Jette and I, but also there is an inextricable link
between the both of us and Honorable Beehler in his role as the
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and
Environment.
And, quite frankly, Honorable Beehler is in the process of
working an Army-wide installation strategy for the future that
tackles energy, environmental programs. When you juxtapose what
we are trying to do with the organic industrial base with what
he is doing, that will be linked in.
And the great thing, quite frankly, is that the Army senior
leaders have given to Dr. Jette, myself, and Honorable Beehler
the funding stream recommendations to them on how we move
forward in this holistic approach. So it is not just on
facilitization of the organic industrial base; it is really
focused on this piece like you mention--protection, energy,
environment, et cetera.
Mr. Brown. And let me just, with the last minute and 20--
and maybe it is picking up where Representative Bacon left off.
But, you know, I think about the Army modernization priorities
under the Futures Command. And, specifically, I think about
long-range precision fires and soldier lethality, the new Next
Generation Squad Weapon.
Are any of the activities in those lanes influencing what
you need to do in the ammunition modernization strategy?
Secretary Jette. Yes, sir.
So let's take the last example that you raised. We have
Next Generation Squad Weapon, next-generation soldier weapon.
The caliber is going to be 6.8. We don't produce 6.8 right now.
So we are going to have to have a facility to be able to
produce 6.8-caliber munitions.
There are three vendors that are competing. Two of the
vendors have a polymer case. One vendor is a brass case, as we
currently produce. And keeping my acquisition hat on here, I am
not choosing anything, but if it is the brass case, for
example, Lake City has a facility already capable. We retool
them, and we could have one line producing 6.8 in a few months.
If one of the polymer cases take place, what we are likely
going to do is use their facilities to produce our interim
supplies while we develop in-house production capabilities, and
they become an ability for surge at a later date.
But it will require retooling and, frankly,
refacilitization, for which we have put in our POM funding to
this point. So we are working towards it. Just waiting for the
solution.
Mr. Brown. And I assume, for long-range precision fires, we
will take that up in a classified setting?
Secretary Jette. Yes, sir.
Mr. Brown. All right.
Secretary Jette. But in some aspects of it, it is very much
the issue of the fillers. But, again, it goes back to, if I
have to go farther, I tend to have less filler; if I have to go
with less filler, can I move to a more energetic material as a
filler? And we are still working those issues.
Mr. Brown. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
Just a followup clarification: Retooling is difficult, but
it is cut-and-dry. Are the base materials changing? So if you
are looking at stockpiling, you know, that would change the
formula and then expirations?
Okay.
Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Jette, General Daly, thanks so much for joining us.
I wanted to refer to a lot of the work the committee has
done on the Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport, better
known as SMET.
We know these robotic mules can do a lot to help folks in
the infantry. We know, too, as we are asking our soldiers in
the infantry to do a lot, we are asking them to carry
particularly heavy loads, lots of equipment, we know the
biggest weight component of that is ammunition. And we know, of
the ammunition component, brass makes up a really, really big
part of that.
I do know that the Army has had a lightweight ammunition
requirement for about 40 years, and it hasn't gotten any
lighter.
So I understand there are a lot of strides that have been
made in polymer-cased ammunition. In fact, I have had the
opportunity to shoot some, both here in the range in Rayburn
and then elsewhere. Pretty amazing ammunition. This 30 percent
reduction I think goes a long way to increase mobility and the
flexibility that folks in the infantry have.
Dr. Jette, could you provide us an update on where the Army
is in filling this requirement? And how far out do you think we
are from fielding the next-generation ammunition? And is the
polymer-cased ammunition the direction that you believe things
are going based on the technology and the research?
Secretary Jette. Let me touch the last question first so
that I stay out of trouble on the first set. Because it is an
ongoing acquisition, I would prefer not to interject my
personal opinion as to which way might be a better way to go.
Mr. Wittman. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette. What I can do is I can describe the
circumstances around this. And it is a great question.
I will tell you that I was a tanker for 28 years in the
Army. I spent 2\1/2\ years in Afghanistan and Iraq while in
uniform, and I never was on a tank; I had to walk everywhere.
And I really have a great sympathy for infantrymen and all the
stuff they have to carry.
At one point, I was also the program executive officer, or
PM at the time, but the PEO--what is now PEO Soldier. So I had
all of those uniforms, guns, equipment, et cetera. It has been
my objective to try and find a way to lighten that soldier's
load from the very beginning.
If I have my basic load, it is 220 rounds. If I fire those
rounds, I have 11 pounds of debris at my feet.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
Secretary Jette. That means, in order to get 220 rounds'
worth of munitions downrange, I've got, only 2 pounds of it is
effective munitions. The rest of it is packaging.
Mr. Wittman. Right.
Secretary Jette. It has been a significant problem with
trying to find an alternative that has been acceptable in all
environments. It has to be able to withstand cold. It has to be
able to withstand shock. It has to be able to--wind, cold,
getting dropped, does it crack, things like this.
Mr. Wittman. Right.
Secretary Jette. When it tries to get jammed into a gun,
does it crack open if it doesn't get in there just exactly
right?
So there are real issues with trying to go to polymer
casing. But where it was in 1998, when I was the PM for all of
these systems, is different than where it is today. So I do
believe that we are making significant headway in having
alternatives to brass casings alone.
Reducing that by one-third, frankly, my experience with the
infantry means that they will add one-third more ammo. And I
believe that this goes exactly to my issue about trying to
enhance our ability and our research and development aspect of
things. Because I think that polymer casings may be--may be--an
intermediate state in going to perhaps even caseless
ammunition.
Mr. Wittman. Gotcha. Yeah, I think that is a great point.
We have had a chance to look at both the polymer case, the
caseless ammo. Obviously a lot of development areas there.
Let me ask this. We currently, in producing ammo, as it
stands today, we have government-owned, government-operated
facilities and government-owned, commercially operated
facilities. If we were to transition to the next generation of
ammo, a lighter ammo, obviously a massive change in
manufacturing in the large scale. Tell me, what would the
effects be in transitioning that? Would we have a proper
transition to make sure that the industrial capacity there that
we have, that we need, that we have heard about can be
maintained and transitioned to this new technology?
Secretary Jette. Yes, sir. The critical aspect of being
able to go to an alternative structure, polymer case, that type
of thing, is tied up into the IP [intellectual property]. These
companies develop them on their own nickel; they own the IP.
They will have production facilities, and we will be able to
buy from those production facilities as well, because they will
probably extend them into the commercial marketplace.
But the other side of things is that, as part of our
solicitations, nailing down the ability to use that IP in our
own facilities and them assisting us in facilitizing those
facilities is essential.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Norcross. Ms. Sherrill.
Ms. Sherrill. Thank you both for being here today.
Just to take it back a step, as we are talking about all
the money we are going to spend on modernization, we are
talking about government-owned, contractor-operated facilities.
So I am wondering what the tradeoffs are of having an
industrial base that is in an industry with no consistent year-
on-year manufacturing requirement.
What risk does the government take on versus what risk do
contractors take on? And, specifically, is there room for
contractors to pay more into this modernization effort, or do
we feel that, given their current profit margins, we would
drive them to discontinue supporting the effort?
Secretary Jette. Thank you. That is a great business
question.
I have taken a look at some of the motivations, trying to
drive vendors to put their own money into the facilities
themselves. Generally, what ends up happening is that they put
money into the facilities, but it ends up on some of their
calculation sheets later on, and I am paying for it over longer
term periods. So they justify a larger G&A [general and
administrative] or overhead rates, and I end up paying not just
on that facility but the rate gets justified across the
industry.
And I also find that I am not sure that I see them
investing effectively in the things that make a difference to
me; they make a difference to their profit margins.
So my view of this is: It is our facility. We should have a
good plan. We should decide on what we want to invest in. And
then we--this is the United States military's, the Department
of Defense's industrial base for munitions. We need to own
that. Not have anything beholden, IP-wise or any other way, to
the defense industry or any other supplier.
Ms. Sherrill. But is there room to raise the rent on some
of our contractors?
Just because I'm just wondering--I just don't know enough
about how much money they are making off these enterprises and
how much the U.S. Government is supporting that profit. And so
do we need to take a look at what more some of our contractors
could be doing to pay into the system? Because we have a heavy
burden to modernize these facilities.
Secretary Jette. Yeah, no, that is a great question.
So we have begun looking at--I have begun looking at the
contracting methodologies we are applying to these facilities.
It is basically, we keep buying and selling to ourselves. And
we do that because we think that that is an easy way to manage
the overall pricing structure.
The problem with that is, at the far end, we are always
trying to push the price down, which means it cascades back
down through the prices that are proposed to us by the
industrial base, the contractors. And the end state of that is,
they are always trying to save money on their margins. We
really can't see in it, because we just bid prices at both
ends, and the end state of that is the lawns don't get mowed,
the fire departments don't get done right.
So what we have begun to do is, starting with Radford, take
a specific look at the contracting methodologies we have put in
place there and then follow--you know the old saying--follow
the money: Who buys what materials at what point? How does that
fit into the contract? How do we need to modify the contract so
the government gets a better position on that?
I want industry to want to work with us, but what I don't
want to do is have a blind eye towards the potential areas
where they can make unexpected profits. When they finish a
material, I want to make sure that I know where it is going,
who is selling, who they are selling to, who they are buying
from.
In Lake City, for example, 50 percent of the facility's
production capability is dedicated to commercial products,
because we have this surge capability, and that is part of the
deal. I am not sure that we are breaking even-steven on that.
So we are doing an investigation to determine whether or not
the government is fundamentally subsidizing commercial
production or not.
So it is a good question. I wish I could give you the
concrete answer with footnotes, but we are in the middle of
trying to determine it right now.
Ms. Sherrill. Great. That is good to hear you are looking
into it.
And then you were speaking earlier about some single-source
materials that we don't produce here, and we have chosen at
this point to import them rather than produce them here. And
when you said it was a regulatory issue, especially for some of
our chemical materials, when you are talking regulatory, are
those environmental regulations?
Secretary Jette. Yes, ma'am, the vast majority of them are
environmental.
In production of DNAN, you start with benzene; you go
through several intermediate states. Some of those materials
have a great deal of controls on these intermediate materials.
We wouldn't leave them there, but just the fact that we produce
them, you have to have a lot of environmental controls, which
impacts the cost of the facility production.
There are alternative methods of producing them, but then
the price of the materials go up. So that is the challenge that
we are dealing with. And then we try to compete against the
price that is half the price if I buy it.
And I think we need to make a hard determination as to what
percent of our supply needs to be unquestionably domestic and
what our surge capacity needs to be.
Ms. Sherrill. And then, finally, as the Army seeks to
modernize both the process and the facilities for producing
munitions and the actual conventional munitions being produced,
what is your vision for the development--and we have spoken a
little bit--and manufacturing of the next-generation, 21st-
century, small-caliber munitions?
Secretary Jette. So the facility we would produce the small
caliber, such as the 6.8, would be at Lake City. And it all
depends on which direction we go. If we go the brass casing, we
have some very modern production lines that are at Lake City.
They are very high-speed, very fast in production. We retool
them and we can add additional lines for relatively small
expense. And that would be one direction, if we have the brass
case.
If we don't, as part of their development effort, the two
that are building the polymer cases are also building the
technology to produce the polymer cases. And then that is part
of this issue of us ensuring that we have a license to be able
to use those technologies and have them help us establish our
own production capability.
Ms. Sherrill. And a final, just real quick: And what did
you say the timeline was of brass? You thought you could do
that in what timeframe versus the polymer in what timeframe?
Secretary Jette. Brass is changing tooling. A few months?
Ms. Sherrill. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette. Whereas--if I wanted to get quickly into
production, a few months on a production line, because I would
just have to retool and change jigs. If I am going to the
polymer casings, I am going to have to build a new facility.
But, in the end, we expect to build a new facility in
either case.
Mr. Norcross. Thank--Ms. Sherrill, are you finished?
Ms. Sherrill. I yield back.
Mr. Norcross. We will have another round, if you want to
hang on.
I want to follow up with exactly what she is talking about.
The single source you have identified as a major concern. The
tooling we talked about.
So the base material across many of the lines has been
there since the 1940s. There are some new ones. So you lay that
up against where it is coming from and the risk associated with
it.
So the question that I think of is stockpiling. Well, it
sounds good, but there might be an expiration date to,
literally, the amount that goes there. But that minimizes your
single source, particularly if you can do quite a bit, just
like our national oil reserves.
Do you have faith in the materials that are most at risk
that you could build up a stockpile, or is there a reason why
we cannot?
Secretary Jette. Mr. Chairman, I am going to share the
answer here, because I think General Daly can contribute as
well.
We do stockpile. We do stockpile precursor materials, and
we do stockpile end-state items, to include materials that are
of importance for us that are sourced from elsewhere.
Mr. Norcross. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette. Right now, we believe we are probably in
an acceptable mode for our ongoing consistent production, and
in some cases there is enough material for some surge capacity.
But if you have any sort of a protracted operation and you had
your supply cut off, eventually you run out.
So, in the end, I believe that you really want to be able
to have an alternative source--either an alternative product
that does the same function or an alternative source that is
either domestic or within your ability to access in an
operational environment.
Mr. Norcross. So private industry, in many ways, steps up
to the plate, but it is particularly difficult here. Why we
have our own.
Have you been approached by some unique manufacturers on a
single line of munitions that they think they can do better
than you are? Or is it the uniqueness of what we are building
that they are unable within a price point to come in?
Secretary Jette. Mr. Chairman, I will give you a--I will
take that question for the record. I don't believe anyone has
ever come to us, but that doesn't mean I know about all
potential approaches. But I will come back to that.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 49.]
Secretary Jette. Given that I am pretty confident that we
haven't been approached there, the fundamental--it goes back to
these hurdles. You have three hurdles at hand. One, the capital
investment that is necessary in order to make a facility that
can actually meet all the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]
and other standards, safety and EPA standards, is expensive.
The second one is these EPA standards, so that we make sure
that we--and operation, so that we don't have pollution in
these intermediate materials. And the third one is the
fundamental cost of the material at the far end.
Oh, I am going to add one more: liability. If I put that
plant--these are explosives. If I put that plant in a place--I
have to put that plant in a place where I have some
indemnification from possible liability should the plant blow
up.
What we have actually begun taking a hard look at is
whether or not we might solicit companies to use our land, much
like we have done with the housing side of things.
Mr. Norcross. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette. We have the land. You get a long-term
lease. We will give you the lease. We will indemnify you. You
are on our facility. And, oh, by the way, you build it, and we
will buy it from you, and here is our long-term plan.
So we are looking at trying to do something like that. That
starts eating away at a number of these issues. But I think we
still have an issue associated with the capital investment at
the front end to get into the business and the potential
challenges of trying to meet all the EPA standards.
Mr. Norcross. One last question for each of you.
General, in what we are talking about today--pretty wide-
ranging--what keeps you up at night? What is that one item?
General Daly. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that question.
I will tell you that our focus, based on the Secretary of
the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army's priorities, five
areas. And because we focus on them all the time, I don't know
that I stay up at night thinking about them, because we are
giving it the right focus right now.
The first is that we meet not only current but future
ammunition requirements in support of the National Defense
Strategy.
The second is that we modernize appropriately. So all the
things we talked about, plus multipurpose facilities, et
cetera.
The third is that we protect our organic industrial base
assets, because they are vulnerable, as you mentioned.
And the fourth has to do with reducing the single points of
failure and the reliance on the 55 foreign suppliers that we
can trace to at this point.
And then the last is always focusing on our people and
safety and the workforce of the future, as, especially on the
GOGO side, the aging workforce.
I think, if we continue to focus on those five areas, we
will be successful for the future. Thank you.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
Dr. Jette.
Secretary Jette. Sir, mine is very similar to General
Daly's. Fundamentally, I think we are meeting our obligations
and are in a good position to meet any current needs and
foreseeable surges. So that is not keeping me up at night.
I do probably worry most about the safety aspects of our
current facilities, primarily because I think that our current
approach is to improve good safety facilities, safety within
the facilities we have, but that is not what is possible.
And what is possible--as I said earlier, three deaths in
the last 10 years on our facilities. Two of them were related
to the manufacturing process. That is two too many.
Mr. Norcross. Uh-huh.
Secretary Jette. And we don't need to have that
circumstance happen anymore. So I do not want to be the
ASA(ALT) and get a phone call that there is another death on
something I could have provided an improvement to.
From the national defense, I am meeting the requirement. I
have it safely operating. I need to fill this hole called
``supply chain.'' I need us to not have a supply problem from
anywhere outside the United States.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
Mrs. Hartzler.
Mrs. Hartzler. I appreciate your focus on safety of the
people as being the most important thing as we look at the
challenges and providing the ammunition to our warfighters. And
I want to mention my constituent Lawrence Bass, who lost his
life there at Lake City in an explosion 3 years ago.
And I am excited about the modernization efforts and
appreciative of it so that that doesn't happen in the future.
But when that happened--talk about single point of failure--
Lake City was shut down for many months as, first of all,
accident reviews were underway, trying to figure out what
happened and what could be done to avoid this in the future,
and then rebuilding the explosive area.
And just wanted you to expound a little bit on the
contingency plans that you have. You say you have identified
the single-point-of-failure places in our industrial complex
here, but what are the contingency plans?
I know, if I remember right from Lake City, we were able to
call upon some industry, some private industry, to help
backfill some of that material that is needed. But could you
expound a little bit on the contingency plans you have in
place?
General Daly. Ranking Member Hartzler, so I will defer to
Dr. Jette on the suppliers, but, in terms of Lake City--in
fact, I just visited Lake City last week. And so, as you
mentioned, a tragedy that occurred in April of 2017. And that
was related, as you know, to mixing of tetrazine for primers.
So the way forward is, we have relooked the way we
manufacture the primers and have adjusted internal to the
plant. And then getting at, as we modernize, making sure we
have multipurpose facilities so that every line can do
different functions. So it is just not 5.56 millimeter on one
line and 7.62 millimeter on a second line, but they are
multipurpose so that we have flexibility on an installation.
And then, to Dr. Jette's point, looking more holistically,
where we can get efficiencies and additional capability in
other locations, not just in the organic industrial base, but
with private industry.
Secretary Jette. Yes, ma'am. And, you know, I didn't--
Lawrence Bass's death was tragic and should not have occurred.
I am not sure that we--we thought we were doing the right
thing. He was performing duties in accordance with what the
procedures were. The problem was the procedures didn't account
for all possible outcomes.
And so that is one of the reasons why, you know, his death
is, in fact, a catalyst to my insistence upon transforming our
approach as opposed to modernizing under the current
circumstances.
He should never have been in that close proximity, where
that event could have happened. And should it have happened
with a machine, I can buy another machine.
Mrs. Hartzler. Yeah.
Secretary Jette. So, while tragic, it has been a motivator.
And I am just totally in line with what General Daly said about
this.
From the aspect of can we find commercial alternative
sourcing for some of the manufacturing capabilities, it depends
on where we are in the line, as to whether or not that would be
easily done in alternative facilities in the commercial sector.
Munitions manufacturing, bullet manufacturing--if they are
basic bullets, then there are alternative sources within the
United States that we could go to. If we start going to unique
materials, like explosive rounds, 30 millimeters, armor-
piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabots, not too much of that
in the commercial sector, nor is there equipment set up to be
able to handle that.
That is why I have gone back to the program executive
officer. We have a new program executive officer, and I
specifically told him his job is: find alternative sources
worldwide that we have that can guarantee us to be able to
produce these.
If we need to establish a contract with another source--I
was in a factory in Korea. They used to supply us basically 50
caliber and below. We stopped it. They have full capability to
do so again, and that would give us a chance to ensure that
they are meeting our quality standards and could then have a
supply that is assured in Korea. Should something occur here,
we can ship it from Korea to here.
So that is probably--U.S., Canada, Mexico, then overseas,
that is the order of sequence we have going right now, where
there are no alternative manufacturing facilities in the United
States.
Mrs. Hartzler. I think that is really smart. And I
appreciate your efforts there. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaking of Lake City again, I know that we are investing--
there are 12 modernization projects there, and they are
receiving quite a bit of funding. So can you walk me through
some of the facility modernization projects that are going on
there?
Secretary Jette. Sorry. I haven't memorized them all.
Mrs. Hartzler. That is a big book.
Secretary Jette. Lake City.
So we have a primer component wash system update. It is a
$2.8 million effort. In that facility, when you create the
primer, you have to rinse out some of the chemicals and then
recover the primer material itself from that. So this is a
facility upgrade so that we can recover more of the primer
material and decrease our output pollution.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay.
Secretary Jette. 5.56 clip line upgrade, which is $7.7
million. If you have 5.56 in a clip so that we can feed it
through a machine gun, we have to have all those clips produced
and then be able to snap them together in an automated fashion.
So it is just an enhancement to the current facility.
Safe pack unload, 2.5. This, again, is just an upgrade to
the 5.56 production capability at that facility. $8.45 million.
By the way, the 5.56 is--tremendously interesting to watch
the machines. And if any of the committee members would like to
go out, I would like to extend an invitation to come to any of
these facilities and see what we are talking about.
There are two lines at Lake City that are really
interesting. They happen to be--I am not sure if they are 5.56
or they are 7.62, but one line is literally the one that
produced the--with the machines from World War II. It is still
functioning today. That is a big factory that produces a
quantity of them.
In the other facility, we have several lines that produce
an equal round today on a totally different production
capability. Those lines--one line produces what that other
building produces in a day.
So the technology difference and what we have an
opportunity to do is tremendous. That is why improving our
5.56--I have to tell you, I don't know what an ``AD BAAP
facility upgrade'' is, but I will find out for you.
Neutralization upgrades.
I am just going to go down this and make sure that I give
you the more detailed answers.
Mrs. Hartzler. Well, yeah, why don't you just get back with
me? I know time with our other members and stuff. But I sure
appreciate it. Thank you.
And I had another question, if we will have time at the
end, but I yield back. Thank you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 49.]
Mr. Norcross. Ms. Sherrill.
Ms. Sherrill. No questions, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Norcross. Mrs. Hartzler.
Mrs. Hartzler. Sorry. Yes, I will ask my last question.
General Daly, in the written testimony, you talk about the
2019 Single Manager for Conventional Ammunition annual report
and the performance measures, and I found this very
fascinating.
As far as the acceptance test, a 99.4 percent pass
frequency, which is important. If you get a bullet, you want to
make sure it's going to work. 99.6 percent as far as inventory
accuracy count, physical inventory, so what is actually there
versus what is in the inventory. I mean, that is amazing. 98.6
percent of the orders filled, perfect orders, for distribution
management category.
The one that I was curious about, though, is acquisition
management category, where it was only an 84 percent on-time
rate. And that deals with delivery dates. So why do we have a
discrepancy there in our delivery dates being only on time 84
percent?
General Daly. So, Ranking Member Hartzler, three of the
four, as you mentioned already--Dr. Jette, I don't know if you
want to take this piece on acquisition management. Because,
really, the metric is associated with suppliers to the organic
industrial base and the timeliness for them to supply to
support production and manufacturing. So----
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay.
General Daly. And, again, the 2020 report is forthcoming,
and, quite frankly, we are going to fall short again on
acquisition management.
Secretary Jette. Yes, ma'am. So there are two pieces that I
am trying to get a better handle on.
One of them is the supplier delivery schedule. It appears
that the delivery schedule--even with COVID, we were pretty
good at keeping up with the delivery schedule or compensating
with our current on-hand stocks.
Another thing that contributes to that and our late
deliveries is late arrival of money. And so, if I get an order
from the Air Force and I don't get the money until a little bit
later, it slows down the process. But they usually tie their
delivery date to the order date, not delivery date to the
funding date. So----
Mrs. Hartzler. So is that a function of Congress? Is it
because of us? We are late in getting approval of the budget,
and so that is why there is no money? Or is it just a problem
within the Air Force or some other Pentagon function that they
are not sending the money out?
Secretary Jette. So I think--so this was an interesting--
great question.
So I went back to the staff when I rooted this out, and I
said, well, you know, why are we waiting? Don't we have
investment? And I started thinking about it. This is an
acquisition, so it is a procurement action. Well, I can't spend
procurement dollars until I have the procurement dollars.
But that is not the case in all cases for how we manage all
things. For example, General Daly has an AWCF, a working
capital fund. So he knows he is going to have demand of a
certain type; he just doesn't know exactly when the date is
going to occur. So he can expend some of his working capital
fund in order to procure items that have long lead times prior
to the order coming in and the funding coming in. It smooths
things out.
And I said, why don't we have a working capital fund for
munitions? And the answer I got back was, well, we used to, and
there were some problems with how it was managed, and so we got
rid of it.
And so I have told my staff--and I have asked General Daly
to help, since he does manage effectively a working capital
fund--I think that we need to revisit that, as to whether or
not to reestablish a working capital fund, put in enough
funding to level out these shortcomings as funding and orders
flow on different dates. And I think that that may have a
significant improvement to our late delivery schedules.
Whenever somebody tells me that you cancel something
because somebody mismanaged it, then fix the mismanagement.
Don't eliminate the methodology.
Mrs. Hartzler. Yeah.
Secretary Jette. That is what I think we are trying to do.
Mrs. Hartzler. Sounds good.
General Daly. Ma'am, if I could. So Dr. Jette and I are 100
percent synched on this. And I think what we have had is a
self-constrained firewall between GOCOs and GOGOs. And what we
are pledging, going forward, is this comprehensive approach
where maybe some of the things we are doing in the GOGOs can be
used at the GOCO level and vice versa. And this gets at the
efficiencies to really go after modernization for the future.
Mrs. Hartzler. Sounds good. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Norcross. Well, I didn't hear anybody take you up on
watching the bullet machine, but ``How It's Made'' is one of
the best shows on TV. Just the ingenuity of engineers and
builders in this great country; 1940, your buildings are still
working, maybe not as efficient, but they know how to do it.
I would like to thank the witnesses for coming by today.
There are a couple items we will follow up with. But we are
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:29 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
September 22, 2020
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
September 22, 2020
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[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
September 22, 2020
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. NORCROSS
Secretary Jette. Numerous private ammunition producers, foreign and
domestic, have approached the Army with unique capabilities. The Army
has researched many of these and procured some to provide our
Warfighters with the greatest available capability. Some examples
include sniper ammunition, shoulder-launched munitions, advanced
propellants, advanced artillery components, and potentially safer
fuzing technology. Private industry is a key enabler in support of our
Warfighter's lethality and is critical in meeting our National Military
Strategy requirements.
Private industry is essential to our Assured Munitions approach.
Domestic production is a combination of government and commercial
production. Commercial entities produce many of the key feeder
materials and participate in various intermediate steps in production
such as milling of propellant and production of 155mm artillery
casings. The Army also leverages direct commercial production for
unique rounds such as sniper ammunition. While industry contributes to
the Army's munitions production in this manner, none are situated to
replace the full breadth or volume of the Army production requirements
as the Single Manager for Conventional Ammunition. The Army's organic
industrial base is a unique and essential capability. [See page 21.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MRS. HARTZLER
Secretary Jette. 1. Primer Component Wash System Upgrade (cost:
$2.80M): The legacy process uses approximately 13M gallons of water
annually and is manually executed by operators exposing them to harsh
chemicals and detergents. These upgrades automate the cleaning process,
increases process efficiency 50 percent (%), decreases wash time by
50%, and recycles 60% of chemicals and rinse water. Furthermore, citric
acid replaces sulfuric acid, which reduces the risk of chemical burns
to the operator and is more environmentally acceptable. These upgrades
dramatically increase operator and environmental safety while
dramatically decreasing water use.
2. 5.56mm Clip Line Upgrades (cost: $7.70M): The legacy system has
numerous maintenance issues and is obsolete as classified by the
original equipment manufacturer. The replacement system produces at a
similar rate, but utilizes robotics to pack rounds and advanced vision
inspection technology to verify packing accuracies. This new system
increases accuracy, reduces maintenance downtime and increases
throughput with increased packaging efficiencies.
3. 5.56mm Safe Pack Unloader 2-5 (cost: $8.45M): The legacy
technique of bulk loading 2,000 primers resulted in a Hazard
Classification of 1.1 (Mass Detonating). Safe Pack upgrades have
significantly reduce the Hazard Classification to 1.4 (Moderate Fire)
by separating primers individually in a plastic tray. The plastic trays
enable the system to hold 2,013 primers per tray and ten trays per Safe
Pack. This has resulted in a significantly safer operation.
4. Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) Facility Upgrade (cost: $9.74M):
Established a new manufacturing area with the required security
infrastructure upgrades to support manufacturing of classified small
caliber ammunition items at a full production rate.
5. Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) Long Lead Equipment (cost:
$9.36M): Procures a bullet assembly press, a cartridge loader, a vacuum
propellant delivery system and a deluge fire suppression system that
will be installed in the classified manufacturing area in support of
ADVAP full rate production.
6. Building 81 Neutralization Upgrade (cost: $15.50M): Building 81
supports the neutralization of energetic wastewater produced during the
manufacturing of explosive materials. The legacy process is labor
intensive and results in a significant hazard during the periodic
cleaning of residual solids that accumulate in the tank. These facility
upgrades automate the neutralization process with a Distributive
Control System used to operate the existing energetic manufacturing
process. Other hardware upgrades, such as the use of a round shaped
tank vice a square shaped tank, effectively removes the operator from
the neutralization and cleaning processes.
7. Prototype Energetic Capability (PEC) (cost: $16.40M): Existing
buildings are sited, through the Department of Defense Explosive Safety
Site Plan process, that authorize production of specific items using
specific quantities of energetic material. It is difficult to evaluate
development items and energetic processes that fall outside of the
approved site plan. Numerous energetic small caliber ammunition items
are currently in development that will transition to LCAAP for full
rate production. The Prototype Energetic Capability project establishes
a facility at LCAAP that is sited (authorized) to conduct manufacturing
studies on developmental energetic items and processes. It will act as
an intermediary step between the research and development facilities
where these items are developed, and the production locations on LCAAP.
8. Next Generation Squad Weapon 6.8mm Equipment/Planning (cost:
$40.0M): The outcome of this process will be an approved design package
with related deliverables ready for future facility construction use.
9. Water Treatment Plant (cost: $40.0M): Scheduled to be complete
by April 2021 and will ensure LCAAP receives an uninterrupted supply of
purified water required to support production. It was also ensure
ancillary activities (i.e. steam generation) and the LCAAP workforce
have potable water for use.
10. Building 3 Roof Replacement (cost: $8.0M): Scheduled to be
complete by December 2020; will replace a failing roof that is no
longer safe to work under.
11. Covered Walkways in Explosive Phase I (cost: $4.1M): Project
was completed in August 2020 in order to protect explosive material as
it is moved between adjacent buildings.
12. Primer Assembly Wing Building 35 Heating Ventilation and Air
Conditioning (HVAC) design (cost: $2.4M): Project was completed in
August 2020 and replaced a 1970's era HVAC system that no longer
controlled temperature and humidity at acceptable levels to meet
explosive manufacturing standards. [See page 25.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. BACON
Secretary Jette. The Army approved the Individual Assault Munition
(IAM) requirements in March 2016. The Army initiated the IAM program of
record in June 2020 and plans to provide Soldiers with this capability
starting in 4th Quarter Fiscal Year 2024. The program office has
identified several production ready IAM candidates that could
potentially meet the requirements, including lethality and weight
parameters. The acquisition strategy will evaluate, through
experimentation, several mature fielded systems in order to make an
informed and affordable decision. [See page 14.]
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
September 22, 2020
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. GOLDEN
Mr. Golden. Dr. Jette, you spoke about the advantages of polymer
casing ammunition, particular in terms of weight. I would note that in
recent years, additive manufacturing has used advanced composite
materials to make meaningful and promising contributions to the defense
industrial base. As the Army looks forward towards modernization of its
ammunition industrial base, what role do you think additive
manufacturing will play? Do you believe Congress is adequately funding
the research and development of this technology?
Secretary Jette. Additive manufacturing is most appropriately
suited to small runs due to the generally slow production rates. It is
excellent for rapid prototyping. Advancement in polymer casing can
benefit from but is not dependent on additive manufacturing. The Army
continues to work with industry and its lab system for the benefits and
maturation of polymer casing ammunitions.
Yes. Continued Congressional investment in the ammunition
industrial base allows the Department of Defense (DOD) to realize the
benefits of additive manufacturing and its impact on the production of
ammunition and ammunition components. Future investments could include
computing infrastructure, additive manufacturing enabling production
processes, adaptive tooling and machining, design engineering, and
digital engineering frameworks. Realizing the full benefits of additive
manufacturing production will require a transformation of our legacy
production processes, along with advances in additive manufacturing
technology, to meet the high production rates associated with
munitions.
[all]