The Pentagon has met with senior executives of Ford Motor and General Motors to gauge whether the auto industry could help the military acquire vehicles, munitions or other hardware more quickly and at lower costs, according to three people familiar with the talks.
The conversations are in the very early stages, and relate to the possible production of components by the companies, not entire weapons systems. No specific projects are currently being negotiated, the people said.
The discussions with automakers underscore Trump administration efforts to revamp military procurement as the war in Iran and U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia deplete supplies. The idea is reminiscent of World War II, when GM, Ford and other automakers supplied the military.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on the talks between the Pentagon and the automakers.
The Trump administration has complained for months that traditional defense contractors take too long to manufacture weapons systems and charge too much for them.
The issue has become more urgent because the war in Iran has depleted U.S. stockpiles of commonly used munitions, such as Patriot missile interceptors. By some estimates, it could take five years or more to replenish the munitions that have been used in the last 40 days.
鈥淲e are on borrowed time,鈥� said John Ferrari, a retired Army major general who is now a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a research group in Washington. 鈥淭he Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, everybody knows that we don鈥檛 have enough munitions.鈥�
The Pentagon has turned to auto suppliers because U.S. officials remember how Ford and GM revamped production lines during the COVID-19 pandemic to make personal protective equipment and ventilators.
During World War II, the U.S. government asked car companies based in and around Detroit to produce weapons, an industrial mobilization that became famous for building what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the 鈥渁rsenal of democracy.鈥� The Willow Run factory that Ford built near Ypsilanti, Michigan, churned out thousands of planes, producing about one B-24 Liberator bomber an hour at its peak. But that was possible only because military officials designed the planes to be built using machinery Ford already owned, Ferrari said.
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