WASHINGTON DC -- President Donald Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act to force defense companies to manufacture more weapons after the war with Iran depleted stockpiles

In a document signed last week, the president says that he finds “that conditions exist which may pose a direct threat to the national defense or its preparedness programs.”

“In particular, systemic constraints in the munitions industrial base, including limited production capacity, fragile supply chains, long-lead dependencies, and related production bottlenecks, may impair the ability of the United States to produce, sustain, and expand the availability of munitions, missiles, and equipment required for the national defense,” the document, sent to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, says.

It’s a significant move for the president to compel private companies to increase production and suggests a substantial level of concern in the Trump administration about the Pentagon’s weapons stockpiles following the war with Iran as well as the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine which saw the US contribute weapons to Israel and Ukraine.

The Pentagon has long had concerns about the defense industry’s ability to produce weapons quickly enough. Those concerns were only exacerbated by the US’ war with Iran, in which the US used up significant portions of key missile stockpiles, experts and officials have told CNN.

On Wednesday, Trump said that the last two days of the war were “brutal” and that “$200 million worth of bombs” were used.

“It is expensive too, by the way, aside from everything else,” Trump said, speaking from the G7 summit in France.

As the war unfolded, Hegseth and other Pentagon officials publicly maintained that the US had what it needed to fight the war and other conflicts around the world.

On Sunday — three days after Trump’s order invoking the Defense Production Act was signed — Hegseth told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation that there was not a crisis with US weapons stockpiles and that the issue is “a manufactured story that the media wants to peddle.”

But privately, munition levels have been a significant concern for the Pentagon. Recent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that the US expended at least 45% of its Precision Strike Missile stockpile, and roughly half of its stockpiles of Patriot air defense interceptor missiles and THAAD missiles.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the order and referred questions to the White House.

The Defense Production Act is a 1950s-era law that is the “primary source of presidential authorities to expedite and expand the supply of resources from the US industrial base to support military, energy, space and homeland security programs,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency says. The act allows the president to require companies to prioritize contracts for deliveries deemed vital to US national defense; create incentives for the industrial base to produce critical materials; and broadly gives the government more authority to make agreements with private companies.

The Act has been used numerous times before for various efforts. Trump previously invoked it during the Covid-19 pandemic in his first term to produce things like ventilators, and at the start of his second term to advance domestic mineral production in the US. Former President Joe Biden also invoked the DPA to accelerate domestic production of clean energy technologies.

Trump’s order on June 11 tells Hegseth to “provide for the making of voluntary agreements and plans of action to help provide for the national defense.” One of the sections of the Act cited by Trump calls for the establishment of an advisory committee.

CNN has reported that before the war with Iran began, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine warned that a prolonged military campaign against Iran could impact US weapons stockpiles.

“The high munitions expenditures have created a window of increased vulnerability in the western Pacific,” Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps Colonel and one of the authors of the recent CSIS report, previously told CNN. “It will take one to four years to replenish these inventories and several years after that to expand them to where they need to be.”

Trump has zeroed in on the defense industrial base before; in January, he issued a threat to companies saying he would seek to limit their stock buybacks and executive salaries unless they improved their weapon systems delivery.

The-CNN-Wire
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