Ever since Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth unilaterally paused some weapons shipments to Ukraine to “assess existing stockpiles,” lawmakers and administration officials have been contending with the same question: Does the United States actually have enough munitions, or not?
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have long been under the impression that U.S. military aid to Ukraine has been manageable, while also backing an increase in production.
“We have been assured that we’re OK,” Sen. Mike Rounds told NOTUS earlier this month when asked about the stockpile after Hegseth’s pause, “but that we have to be looking to the future, and in doing so, we’re going to increase our ability to manufacture and maintain a larger store.”
Since the start of the war, the U.S. has sent over 3 million 155 mm artillery rounds to Ukraine, and recently sent three Patriot air defense units with the required munitions. The exact number of Patriot rockets the U.S. has sent to Ukraine is classified.
Rounds agreed that the U.S. is “selling things out and using quite a few” of these critical munitions, but did not raise any grave concerns. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the same, calling Hegseth’s munitions pause a mistake.
“Obviously, anytime you’re transferring munitions, OK, it’s bringing your stocks down,” Kaine told NOTUS. “We have been hearing that our production pace has enabled us to have sufficient stocks.”
The U.S. Army, which is the main manager of both 155 mm artillery and Patriot rockets, maintains that the American stockpiles are doing just fine.
“We believe we have the ammunition that we need to conduct all of our training, to have the stockpiles we need for contingencies and to supply our allies and partners,” an Army spokesperson told NOTUS.
This assuredness is why Hegseth’s temporary pause of munitions, which also caught the White House off guard, has caused some head-scratching on Capitol Hill. It has also put added pressure on the Pentagon’s determination to completely overhaul the way the U.S. acquires and produces munitions.
In 2024, the Army set a goal of increasing national production to 100,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery munitions per month. Facilities are currently producing 40,000 rounds per month. In late June, the Army said it wouldn’t hit its goal until “the end of 2026 or by mid-year.” Many of those rounds are being sent straight to Ukraine, not to Army storage facilities.
Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll has been pushing the Army Transformation Initiative, a to streamline acquisitions. The Army says Driscoll’s plan won’t impact government workers at major munitions plants, but it may change their leadership structure.
Republicans largely support these reforms, including in the United States’ munitions production system. Much of the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act supports Driscoll’s plans to cut red tape for upstart defense firms.
“One of the things we found in this Ukrainian endeavor, our effort to help Ukraine, is we’ve seen our stockpiles reduce and had to address this atrophy that we have in our munitions production infrastructure,” Rep. Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said last week.
His Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery Act, known as the SPEED Act, is the basis for this year’s House defense authorization bill.
Trump’s budget reconciliation law included $23 billion specifically for faster “purchases of most important munitions,” and to increase “capacity in the industrial base to support higher levels of munitions production.”
“This is about supercharging our own industrial base,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. “It’s past time to do it and I think part of the selling point, at least for me, on reconciliation.”
But Driscoll’s plans have also raised concern among some lawmakers who think these changes could potentially cause major disruptions to delay production timelines in the immediate term, particularly at a time when the status of U.S. munitions stockpiles is fuzzy.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill sent a letter to Driscoll and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth saying Driscoll’s plan would “damage the Army’s ammunition acquisition efforts and would have a devastating impact on Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, where that effort is managed.”
The letter, signed by nearly the entire New Jersey congressional delegation, including Republicans, goes on to say that the plan “would lead to nearly $1 billion less in funding for Picatinny Arsenal and the loss of approximately 1,000 jobs.”
Rep. Chris Smith was the only member of the delegation not to sign on to the copy NOTUS obtained.
Driscoll says it’s a needed change, telling NOTUS in a statement that the shifts are some of the “most critical transformation in decades.”
“No longer will innovation be stifled by a calcified bureaucracy,” the statement reads. “No longer will lobbyists and special interests dictate what’s best for America’s soldiers.”
Sherrill isn’t the only one concerned about how changes will affect her district, though. At a hearing last Wednesday, Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas brought up the Red River Army Depot.
“We all know that DOD facilities like Red River, some of them underutilized,” Fallon said. “You’ve got a highly skilled labor force at Red River, at that depot and others. Once those poor folks, if we happen to lay them off, they’re gone. And we’re not going to get them back.”
Fallon pointed out that it’s “very difficult to replace that kind of labor” and that even though he and the committee are committed to the acquisitions overhaul, his own parochial issue was one that could be hard to recover from.
Jesse Tolleson, the acting assistant secretary of the Army, told Fallon that the Army is looking to “streamline the public-private partnership” and bring in outside capital investment to possibly shift the workforce focus to modern needs.
All of those changes are untested.