
Procurement budgets are growing. The military is offering suppliers multiyear contracts to encourage companies to invest more in their manufacturing capacity and is dispatching teams to help solve supply bottlenecks. More generally, the Pentagon is abandoning some of the cost-cutting changes embraced after the end of the Cold War, including corporate-style just-in-time delivery systems and a drive to shrink the industry. President Biden has also turned to the Defense Production Act — used during the pandemic to speed up the manufacturing of respirators and vaccines — to move ahead with new missile programs faster, including a number of hypersonic weapons being developed for the Air Force, the Army and the Navy.