Gallagher Hosts Defense Industry Officials For Defense Innovation Hearing

Today, Rep Mike Gallagher, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, led the subcommittee in a hearing entitled "Industry Perspectives on Defense Innovation and Deterrence." Witnesses included Jim Taiclet, Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin, Brian Schimpf Co-founder and CEO of Anduril Industries, and Richard Jenkins Founder and CEO of Saildrone.

In his opening remarks, Chairman Gallagher said in part, "Once we get moving, once the crisis occurs, America has a special talent for mobilizing and beating totalitarian regimes that struggle to deal with friction. But, the abiding weakness of free peoples is that our governments cannot or will not make us prepare or sacrifice before we are aroused, to quote a famous statement from the Korean War."

Watch Chairman Gallagher's first round of questions and witness responses HERE or read highlights below.

In his first round of questions, Chairman Gallagher said in part, "I understand we have a very complex economic relationship with China, everyone’s supply chain runs through China in some sense…a lot of major companies, but I’d be curious since you all are in the business of building weapon systems designed to sink Chinese ships and aircraft, how do you think about that?... Then, how do you think about your own supply chains and ensuring that they can withstand economic coercion from the Chinese Communist Party?"

Mr. Taiclet responded in part, "I'm in the camp that believes that China is competing aggressively against the United States and our allies. They have different system than we do. They drive a dual circulation economy, which intends to make us more dependent on them, and them less dependent on us. They practice civil military fusion, which basically demands and commands the commercial industries in China to devote their technologies and pipeline their capabilities into their People's Liberation Army. That's who we're competing with."

Mr. Schimpf responded in part, "Our view has been to go above and beyond on removing China from the supply chain. We have basically eliminated nearly every part possible that we can get away from. We have gone above and beyond to source everything we can from US and allied manufacturing sources, but it's a significant challenge and often, the capacity within the US does not exist. This has taken significant investment on our part to either bring things in house or find and invest in those partners that can scale with what is needed. This is an area where I think the Department and Congress can have a significant positive impact."

Mr. Jenkins responded in part, "I think the US needs do a much better job of enhancing and embracing civilian and commercial technologies in the defense realm. I'll also point out you mentioned weapons, I think it's a lot more than just weapons. It's an information war as well. Saildrone doesn't weaponize platforms at this stage, but we do collect critical ISR data. I think people often overlook the need for precision, accurate, truthful data in order to inform decisions we make with weapons."

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Watch Chairman Gallagher's second round of questions and witness responses HERE.

Watch the hearing in its entirety HERE.