THREAD LEVEL GREEN
Tis effort will provide the foundation for innovation and technological dominance required to support the National Security Strategy (NSS) and National Defense Strategy (NDS) in three key areas:
• Assess the financial and production capability of current domestic textile producers that support key product lines from fiber to finished product, ensuring resiliency and redundancy throughout the relevant supply chains (fiber, fabric and assembly). These assessments will allow the IBAS program to prioritize limited resources toward more vulnera- ble sectors of the industry.
• Develop prototype machinery and production lines that address emerging operational needs and existing tech- nology gaps to drive affordability and availability across the domestic defense industrial base. By comparison, overseas advancements in textile technology may not be available to DOD, potentially creating a situation where peer compet- itor forces have advantages in area such as detectability and environmental and ballistic protection.
• Expand the current United States manu- facturing industrial base to meet critical material supply requirements through capability and skill improvements with traditional and nontraditional suppliers through innovative financial invest- ments and technology infusion. The United States must maintain surge production capacity for textile products to support rapidly emerging wartime demand. This will not be possible without modern factories and trained workers.
BERRY-REGULATED From the 1970s until 2004, world textile trade was governed by the Multi Fiber Arrangement (MFA). Tis consisted of a system of quotas that limited bilateral
imports of specific types of textiles and apparel with the purpose of preventing any one country from dominating the textiles export market. Phasing out of that agree- ment began in 1995, and it was eliminated in 2005 as the textile trade came under the jurisdiction of the World Trade Orga- nization.
The defense textile industrial base has always surged to meet wartime requirements. This default expectation may no longer be possible.
In 1995, the United States was the world’s leading apparel maker, accounting for 13 percent of the world’s textile market. However, by 2017 that number had dropped to 3 percent. Te second-order effects to the United States have been the loss not only of manufacturing compe- tencies but also of more skilled design, engineering and production skills across supporting industries.
Textiles form an integral component of many defense and commercial systems in ways that don’t appear obvious to the common observer. While uniforms, tents, parachutes and backpacks are certainly fabric-based, textile applications also include composite and non-woven struc- tures. Kevlar body armor, fiberglass in drones and carbon fiber in advanced aircraft are all textile-based applications.
For DOD textile products, the govern- ment retains domestic capability through protected supplier arrangements such as the Berry Amendment and the Javits- Wagner-O’Day Act. Tese protections have also resulted in a fragile DOD supply chain, for which the government is often the only customer.
Te Berry Amendment requires DOD to give preference in procurement to domestically produced, manufactured or home-grown products, most notably food, clothing, fabrics and specialty metals. No textile-based product procured by DOD can contain any foreign-made fiber or be processed otherwise overseas. Te Berry Amendment-protected DOD supply chain represents the output of 12 percent of textile mills, 21 percent of textile product mills and 26 percent of apparel production, and these are generally seen as an essential element of the remaining U.S. textile, apparel and footwear indus- trial base.
Increased automation and assembly capa- bilities would help to add flexibility to the Berry-protected supply chain, allow- ing for greater diversity in production and potential expansion into non-DOD markets. Moreover, the U.S. textile indus- try is identified in a report drafted by the Interagency Task Force in Fulfillment of Executive Order 13806 on “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States” (September 2018). With the large move- ment of textile manufacturing to cheaper foreign markets—and fewer domestic companies producing textiles—sources for shelters, clothing, individual equip- ment and composites, such as body armor and helmets, face greater risk. Currently, only a few domestic sources can provide the material requirements for defense- specific textiles.
24 Army AL&T Magazine Fall 2020
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