Chairman Wicker Leads SASC Hearing on Low-Cost Munitions

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today led a hearing to examine the role of low-cost munitions in U.S. national defense and the need to strengthen the defense industrial base to support scalable, affordable weapons production.

Vice Admiral Elizabeth Okano, USN, Principal Military Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition; Lieutenant General Frank J. Lozano, USA, Portfolio Acquisition Executive Fires; Lieutenant General Steven P. Whitney, USSF, Director of Force Structure, Resources and Assessment, J8; and Brigadier General Robert P. Lyons III, USAF, Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Weapons and Director of the Armament Directorate, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, all appeared before the committee.

In his opening remarks for the record, Chairman Wicker stressed that the changing character of warfare requires a shift toward mass, affordability, and speed in munitions production, rather than reliance on high-cost systems alone. He highlighted the need to strengthen the defense industrial base, accelerate low-cost weapons development, and ensure the United States and its allies can meet growing operational demands and counter adversaries deploying large volumes of inexpensive systems.

Read Chairman Wicker's hearing opening statement as submitted for the record:

The committee meets this morning to discuss low-cost munitions and their role in America's national defense.

We are joined by a distinguished panel of officers: Vice Admiral Elizabeth Okano, Lieutenant General Frank Lozano, Lieutenant General Steven Whitney, and Brigadier General Bob Lyons. I thank our witnesses for appearing today and for their service to our nation.

For too long, we have equated the cost of a munition with the capability of that munition. But on today's battlefield, that assumption no longer holds. In many cases, we can achieve much of the desired military effect at a fraction of the cost. We now have a fundamentally different approach to munitions design and production. This approach prioritizes manufacturability and commercial supply chains. It embraces rapid testing cycles and incorporates modular technologies, which allows us to build components that can integrate into multiple different systems.

The character of warfare has changed. The wars of today cannot be won solely based on American technological superiority and exquisite weapons-exquisite referring to high-cost, technically complex weapons. Modern conflict demands large amounts of munitions that are produced at speed and are highly adaptable.

We have seen this play out in real time. Public reporting on U.S. military operations in the Middle East highlights the large volumes of munitions required to sustain operations. Yet we often use very costly systems to stop low-cost threats. Patriot interceptors, for example, can run as much as $4 million per shot. We sometimes use Patriots to defeat threats that were built at a small fraction of that price. And we use Tomahawks against targets that could be countered by far less capable weapons. To fix this imbalance, we need to embrace a range of military options in the munitions space.

At the same time, our defense industrial base has struggled to keep pace. For years, inconsistent demand signals from the Department of Defense and byzantine procurement practices made it difficult for industry to invest, scale, and sustain production. In some cases, production lines went cold.

Last year, the department stood up a "Munitions Acceleration Council"-known as the MAC-to tackle these problems. Its mission is to remove structural barriers and expand long-term industrial capacity-a necessary and overdue initiative. Congress supported this effort in last year's National Defense Authorization Act. We provided the Pentagon with unprecedented seven-year procurement authorities for certain munitions.

Thus far, I have been disappointed to see that the department's approach has been heavily weighted toward exquisite munitions. Less than three percent of the department's MAC plan would fund low-cost munitions. The MAC plan is good, and we should expand our lines for Patriot, Tomahawk, THAAD, and more.

We need a crash program for a high-low mix in munitions. A dedicated initiative like that must take advantage of simpler designs, and it must lead us to build those designs at scale through advanced manufacturing techniques. Such a program would also be crucial for our allies and partners, who face five- to seven-year backlogs for some traditional munitions. We cannot be the Arsenal of Democracy if we cannot get weapons out the door.

A portfolio of low-cost munitions allows us to build a blended force, with the right mix of low- and high-cost systems. We are beginning to see what is possible, led by innovative military organizations and a competitive industry.

When it comes to strike weapons, we have an abundance of new options. We now have upward of eight companies-some old, some new-that are capable of producing low-cost cruise missiles in the $300,000 to $500,000 range. This represents anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of the cost of our exquisite munitions. General Lyons and his team have led in this effort. We have new companies like Zone 5 and Anduril competing with established primes like L3 and Leidos. Zone 5, for instance, developed its Rusty Dagger cruise missile in 16 months, which is almost unheard of. American security assistance for Ukraine funded that work here in the United States. Those weapons are going to be used not only by the Ukrainians but also by our own forces-and at great scale. We need to double up on low-cost cruise missiles, whether air-launched, ground-launched, or ship-launched, for our forces and those of our allies and partners.

We are making progress with hypersonic strike missiles, too. For instance, a company called Castelion has advanced its Blackbeard missile with incredible speed. The Blackbeard missile costs roughly 3 percent of the price of our current exquisite hypersonic strike programs. Castelion has been conducting tests every month. Both the Army and the Navy have jumped on the opportunity. Ursa Major just announced a similar hypersonic strike missile. Hermeus is conducting an interesting reusable hypersonic strike program. There is great promise in this area.

We are also building new maritime mines, one-way-attack drones, and unmanned surface vessels, all of which have new and expanding production lines across a range of industry partners.

Lower-cost air defense interceptors are, perhaps, our greatest area of need. We need a Manhattan Project-type effort, which should develop affordable alternatives to the current Patriot, THAAD, and Standard Missile series and do so rapidly. That work has already begun among a small number of companies, but it remains far behind the bevy of options available today for strike weapons.

The U.S. is not alone in this effort. Our allies and partners are essential to scaling production, diversifying supply chains, and sharing the burden of development. Deepening that international cooperation will be critical to sustaining our advantage. We should be making quick deals with allies and partners. I hope our witnesses will speak about the potential rewards of these deals. I am grateful for the ways the newly created Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Armaments Cooperation has helped in these conversations.

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, and I hope they detail their efforts to advance low-cost munitions, to overcome bureaucratic inertia, and to ensure forthcoming budgets reflect the need for mass and affordability. I also ask Lieutenant General Steven Whitney of the Joint Staff to discuss how the department is integrating these capabilities into our force structure.

Our adversaries are not standing still. They are fielding large numbers of low-cost systems, and they do so on purpose. They intend to overwhelm our defenses, aware that our magazine is full of expensive weapons that we will use to defend against their low-cost systems. Our industry and service members are more innovative and creative than anyone in the world, and it is high time we unleash them. We must produce low-cost munitions at scale to rebuild our arsenal for the threats of today and tomorrow.