A Proactive, Network-Based Approach to Defense Supply Chain Capacity

Public and private sector awareness of the need for supply chain monitoring and analysis increased substantially in the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The U.S. Department of Defense has some resources that enable the tracking and monitoring of supply chains (for major programs, in particular); however, most of these resources have limitations tied to the availability and timeliness of data.

Viewing the defense supply chain as a network of relationships and flows and applying the entire body of network analysis would allow (1) systematic examination of the network to identify and investigate possible problems with capacity or overreliance prior to the onset of a crisis and (2) rapid diagnosis of the nature and extent of concerns arising from any given supplier as they ramify through the supply chain to affect key programs.

Using a network-based approach, it may be possible to craft a relatively simple regulatory clause that would allow for the capture of key information without overly burdening companies in the defense supply chain and, over time, would allow the defense supply network to be more fully characterized and mapped. In this paper, the authors propose such a clause that, if implemented, would help enable the types of proactive and agile actions needed to build supply chain capacity and resilience and to more rapidly respond to and mitigate disruptions when they occur.