Ensuring a viable industrial base that can support and sustain critical capabilities is imperative to maintaining our Nation’s security. The interagency Defense Production Act (DPA) Committee is charged with addressing these challenges.   

ANSER, an operating unit of Analytic Services, has been vigorously helping the DPAC execute its responsibilities to assess domestic industrial capacity, discern market dynamics, and advise the President on how to use the DPA to address key concerns,.  Since joining, our team has provided consultative support through: technical and economic analyses for DPAC Study Groups and pointed legislative policy analysis. 

Additionally, we assisted in drafting and disseminating three industry-wide Requests for Information while also coordinating a widely attended Proposers Day for the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation’s (NNMI) Pilot Institute. The NNMI event secured approximately 270 participants including senior government officials, a diverse portfolio of universities, federal research labs and agencies, along with a full spectrum of small, medium, and large businesses. 

When testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on the Department of Defense’s (DoDs) need to strategically make investment choices, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy Brett Lambert, said, “We have undertaken an aggressive effort to map and assess the industrial base sector-by-sector, tier-by-tier. The goal is to understand the gross anatomy of the industrial base.”  We’re proud to help build this institutional knowledge and believe it will be vital to informing strategic national decisions.     

DPA/DPAC 

Resulting from pressing economic needs during the Korean War, the DPA was enacted by Congress in 1950 to communicate and coordinate national manufacturing plans.  In the sixty plus years since its inception, the DPA has helped foster many budding, critical industrial capabilities. Examples include the stewardship of the aluminum and titanium trades in the 1950s and, more recently, re-establishment of domestic capacity to produce high-purity beryllium metal for defense weapon systems.  

The DPAC is composed of 17 Cabinet Secretaries and Agency Heads, with DoD and DHS rotating as chair on an annual basis. It ensures that the U.S. industrial base can meet essential government needs.  To identify these common, cross-cutting U.S. Government unmet supply-needs the DPAC established three Study Groups, co-chaired by DoD and civilian officials, focused on critical supply chain issues in the following areas: Metal Fabrication; Power & Energy; and Telecommunications.