Recent global conflict again has shown that the ability to sustain the warfighter with firepower is critical to the U.S. Army’s ability to fight and win. U.S. Army Materiel Command has been sharpening the service’s organic industrial base through new initiatives aimed at being ready to answer when and wherever called upon.

The organic industrial base—23 arsenals, depots and ammunition plants—provides critical materiel and sustainment support to warfighters across the joint force. It manufactures and resets Army equipment, generating readiness and operational capability throughout Army formations. Simply put, when the force needs equipment or parts manufactured, repaired, upgraded or modernized, artisans at the Army’s organic industrial base deliver.

The military’s support of the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which has directed the nation’s military assistance to Ukraine, demonstrates the Army’s need to increase surge capacity across the industrial base, showing that the organic industrial base is as important as it has ever been. The Army must anticipate that its importance will only grow in the future if a situation arises that progresses the nation from competition into crisis and conflict.

That is why the organic industrial base is undergoing its most comprehensive modernization in history. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a significant and lasting impact on the future of the Army. The Army’s Organic Industrial Base Modernization Implementation Plan is a 15-year, $18 billion holistic investment that will modernize facilities, processes and the workforce to bring the organic industrial base into the 21st century, infusing industry best practices and refining human capital management structures to maximize workforce skills and capabilities.

Through a combination of new efforts and increased emphasis on existing capabilities, Army Materiel Command (AMC) is setting ourselves on a strategic path to set and sustain the theater early and in an anticipatory nature. Army sustainment always has been a bellwether of U.S. military readiness, and the organic industrial base is the backbone of the Army’s sustainment capabilities, responsible for maintaining, repairing and overhauling equipment.

More than that, the organic industrial base will be a key center of gravity for the next large-scale combat operation. As the nation’s adversaries look at the organic industrial base and the Army’s capabilities, AMC must anticipate that they will want to slow down the service’s response, starting at the source. That is why the command must not only focus on fortifying the 23 sites around the nation, but also look outside the factory fence line to harness the full power of the organic industrial base.

Supporting Soldiers

As the Army prepares for large-scale combat operations within a contested environment, AMC must accelerate the repair process and no longer can solely rely on lengthy maintenance and sustainment resupply capabilities provided by forward operating bases or stateside facilities.

Our ability to quickly get equipment back to the fight is crucial to the nation’s ability to project strength. That is where the agility of the artisan workforce comes into play. The organic industrial base’s expeditionary capabilities are essential for supporting and sustaining units in theater, enabling readiness by getting equipment back to the fight faster.

At any given time, 600 to 1,000 organic industrial base representatives are working away from their home sites and, in many cases, around the world in more than 30 countries, providing essential support up to the tactical edge. For example, they are in unit motor pools and assembly areas, using their technical expertise to increase Army readiness, and training others to do the same.

In the past year, a Letterkenny Army Depot field team deployed from Pennsylvania to Ansbach, Germany, and Vicenza, Italy, in support of the 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, to comply with the Avenger Modification-Service Life Extension Program. The team completed the modifications in 22 days, half the time anticipated and at a lower cost to the Army.

These capabilities are a critical link between the strategic support area and warfighters at the tactical edge, generating readiness by manufacturing and fabricating critical components and maintaining and rebuilding equipment forward at the point of need.

The Army no longer has echelons of maintenance built into the force, and units don’t have the in-depth knowledge and skills necessary to complete advanced maintenance. There is an art to troubleshooting and repairs; it is a skill learned with time and daily repetition. It doesn’t matter the platform; there is an expertise that comes with working with equipment every day. That is what organic industrial base artisans provide; they work with logistics assistance representatives to verify or validate conditions of the equipment.

In the Field

In Poland, a U.S. Communications-Electronics Command team supported Troop A, 1st Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, during a deployment in the spring of 2024. The unit had contacted the command’s Software Engineering Center about an AH-64 Apache Aircraft Gateway Processor, and the response team determined that the processor’s software was outdated. These experts provided hands-on assistance and training to the unit’s soldiers, helping them learn advanced troubleshooting techniques.

Across the world in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, in the spring and summer of 2024, we had three U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command personnel providing responsive assistance to U.S. Army Central. These employees were on-site to conduct assessments, execute inspections and coordinate repairs as the Army leveraged its tools to maintain depth for Army Central/Central Command watercraft moving cargo to the Trident Pier. The Trident Pier was an approximately 1,800-foot causeway composed of modular sections linked together, which provided aid to Gaza.

These forward mobile teams provide on-site expertise unique to the U.S. military and its partners and allies, and now is the time to practice and codify this process. The Army cannot wait for the next conflict to exercise its expeditionary strength, connecting the nation’s organic industrial base capabilities to the Operation Readiness Program.

The Operation Readiness Program will provide a depot-level touch for deploying units by aligning depot support teams with assigned units’ deployment schedules to assess and regenerate their readiness. AMC is developing this pilot program with U.S. Army Forces Command to forward-deploy depot teams with units. These flyaway teams go to the unit’s home station, training centers and in-theater to help improve equipment readiness for the mission.

Leveraging Technology

Along with the expeditionary capabilities of the organic industrial base, a key piece to the rapid repair and return of equipment to the field is harnessing cutting-edge technologies. For instance, advanced manufacturing is revolutionizing how the Army can produce and replace critical components, reducing equipment downtime and improving combat power. These capabilities keep weapon systems fighting until the supply chain can catch up.

Tank-automotive and Armaments Command’s Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is leading the way in the Army’s materiel capabilities, ensuring that the organic industrial base is responsive and capable of supporting soldiers in any environment. By leveraging technologies like metal 3D printing, the Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center can produce essential components on demand.

Advanced manufacturing has gone from a dream to a reality in fiscal 2024 as the Army delivered its first 3D-printed parts to units to get their vehicles back to mission-capable status. AMC has more than 1,000 parts in our digital repository, and our experts are going line by line to identify candidates for more parts we can 3D-print and quickly deliver to soldiers, partners and allies ahead of need.

This pairs with lessons we’ve learned while providing remote maintenance to Ukraine in its war with Russia. The U.S. Army is developing and testing remote maintenance solutions to maximize maintenance capabilities for warfighters no matter their location, from far-flung Pacific islands to the forests of Eastern Europe. By leveraging this technology, sustainers can provide real-time diagnostics and reduce equipment downtime for soldiers, partners and allies around the world.

Tied with predictive logistics and data analytics, the Army is connecting the foxhole to the factory and giving leaders the ability to anticipate requirements on the battlefield and forward-position the right equipment, repair parts and personnel to get ahead of need.

As a former organic industrial base commander, I can’t emphasize enough the criticality of what its artisans do. The Army’s depots, arsenals and ammunition plants are highly engaged, not only operating their facilities at surge capacity, but also projecting their skilled experts into the field in support of soldiers. These capabilities are crucial to the Army, ensuring that the organic industrial base is ready to answer when called upon, no matter where the need is.

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Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan has been deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Materiel Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, since December 2022 and acting commanding general of AMC since March. Previously, he was commanding general of U.S. Army Sustainment Command. He deployed multiple times in support of operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He was commissioned in 1989 from Appalachian State University, North Carolina, as a distinguished military graduate. He has two master’s degrees: one in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College, and one in military strategy from the U.S. Army War College.