In a congressional hearing before a House Appropriations Subcommittee, Department of Defense officials said that while significant efforts are being made to upgrade the organic industrial base (OIB), the military is still has a ways to go from being fully modernized.
“The Army and our OIB must modernize for the future,” said Army Lt. Gen. Duane A. Gamble, deputy chief of staff, G-4. “As I testified to this committee before, we have World War II-era facilities, and many of them are outdated for today’s requirement, let alone for the needs of the future force.”
Gamble said that the Army has spent nearly $3 billion since 2019 to upgrade its facilities and infrastructure. He said in FY21 alone, the service has already executed $800 million in improvements to depots, arsenals and ammunition plants.
Navy Vice Adm. William J. Galinis, commander of Naval Sea Systems, said the service has made progress to its Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, but more work is still needed.
“I will tell you in no uncertain terms, we need now to expand the productive capacity of our naval shipyards, or we run the risk of not being able to perform the required maintenance and repair work for our nuclear-powered fleet, principally our submarines and aircraft carriers, a decade from now,” said Galinis.
Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Shrader, commanding general of the Marine Corps Logistics Command, reported the branch has been focusing its efforts on 5G-technology development.
“As a DOD-selected 5G test site, we are working with OSD to develop 5G-enabled smart warehouse technologies — such as handheld scanners, optical character recognition, passive RFID and robotics,” he said. “This state-of-the-art technology vastly improves our supply chain efficiency, auditability and support to the fleet marine force.”
Photo by Jim Cleveland, Navy
