America’s Stockpiles Are Hardly Strategic – By Tristan Abbey (Defense One) / Feb 9 2021
Before we assemble new reserves of critical commodities, we need a hard look at the existing ones.
Among President Biden’s first acts was to order a “status and inventory” report from the Strategic National Stockpile, a once-quiet backwater of the public-health bureaucracy thrust into the spotlight amid last year’s acute shortages of medical supplies and equipment. Now, as the pandemic and competition with great powers fuel proposals to construct additional stockpiles—and not simply of gloves and ventilators—it is worth taking stock of where we are. Many of our existing reserves lack clear direction and face an uncertain future.
Federal stockpiles essentially come in three flavors: medical, defense, and commodities. The SNS and All-Hazards Emergency Caches contain a wide array of medical drugs and other supplies. The National Veterinary Stockpile fulfills this function for livestock.
Naturally, the Department of Defense is the king of storage. Each service branch maintains its own prepositioned stocks of war materiel. The Defense Logistics Agency supervises the National Defense Stockpile, filled with various metals, including the “rare earth” elements so critical to weapons.
Reserves are more than physical storage. You can store food in your pantry, but you can also plant your own garden. In this latter way, DOD wields powerful authority under the Defense Production Act of 1950. This statute, most recently invoked to boost Covid-19 testing availability, allows it to shore up domestic suppliers for defense purposes. The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska operates under a similar philosophy: companies actively produce oil from it, proving that more could be produced if we ever needed to.
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