Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante, fresh from a meeting last week with NATO's top armaments directors, said defense contractors should expect the United States to soon announce more multinational procurement deals -- involving co-development, co-production and co-sustainment -- with its closest allies, including Ukraine.
“Production diplomacy is what I call it,” he said during a moderated discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, adding: "I think this is going to be a big emphasis of NATO."
LaPlante said his meeting in Brussels last week with NATO’s national armaments directors included discussion about various “FrankenSAM” efforts for Ukraine -- existing surface-to-air missile systems that have been modified for Ukrainian use.
“We have these things called the FrankenSAMs -- anti-air, anti-missile, anti-UAS systems,” he said.
An example would be U.S.-made AIM-7 and RIM-7 missiles that have been modified to use Soviet-era Buk air defense systems.
LaPlante said he and Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu have also been in talks with Australian defense officials over various co-development and co-production opportunities.
Australia and the United States announced in July that they intend to co-produce munitions for Lockheed Martin’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System.
Additionally, Shyu said last month she was planning to have a meeting with Australian military officials to discuss possibilities for air and missile defense integration.
LaPlante said more is on the way.
“We're going to set up some other co-productions with the Australians, same in Europe and we're going to set up even co-productions with the Ukrainians in their country,” he said.
“We have other companies coming to the United States,” he said, noting the April 2022 announcement from Elbit, an Israeli company, to expand munitions production near Charleston, SC.
LaPlante said, however, that the United States has plenty of work ahead if it wants to begin accumulating the necessary stockpiles of weapons needed for continued support to Ukraine and possible conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.
Multiyear procurements, LaPlante said, are key to accomplishing that goal as the U.S. defense industry needs a reliable demand signal so it can begin investing its own funds to expand production.
U.S. allies, he said, are having difficultly getting their own industrial bases to believe the promise of multiyear deals.
“That's in their country,” he said, not naming the allies.
“We generally don't break multiyear contracts in the DOD. We honor them,” he said. “That's the reason we want to get to them. It takes one more reason away from industry to say, ‘I'm not putting my [capital expenditure funds] against it.’”
Congressional appropriators, however, have been reticent to support all of DOD’s requests for multiyear munitions funding and lawmakers, unable to compromise on federal spending, are inching toward a government shutdown.
A best-case scenario at this point, given how deeply divided GOP and Democratic lawmakers are in the House and Senate, is a stopgap continuing resolution. LaPlante said CRs hurt DOD acquisition in that facilities can be closed and personnel can be furloughed if they are not given specific exemptions, interrupting the execution of contracts.
“If the government shuts down, it's worse,” he said. “Testing will stop. Accepting by the government of equipment when it is finished can stop.”
The Pentagon is preparing for a possible shutdown on Oct. 1, noting in guidance that military personnel who are on active or reserve duty will continue to report for work, while only “the minimum number of civilian employees necessary to carry out excepted activities will be excepted from furlough.”
LaPlante, meanwhile, said there is a system he wants to test for Ukraine that will require a waiver if is to be tested.
“I have some testing we want to do next week on an item for Ukraine and unless we can get some type of a waiver, which we're going to get, it's not going to happen,” he said. “And people are not going to be able to travel. It's extremely disruptive. We're sending people home -- our engineers, our acquisition professionals, our sustainers, our contracting officers, We're just sending them home and saying, ‘You're non-essential.’ It's just horrible.”