Citing concerns about national security and the stability of the U.S. defense industry, U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., is urging Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to rigorously enforce laws created to ensure that the U.S. maintains its technological edge in the production of high-performance metals used in advanced weapons systems.

In a letter sent to Gates, Bayh and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY., express the view that the Department of Defense (DOD) is not “properly complying with the laws passed by Congress to safeguard the nation’s defense industrial base,” according to a statement released on Thursday.” The DOD’s actions and policies may have the effect of subverting the law rather than enforcing it.”

Bayh and Clinton cited concerns that the DOD considers imported metals to be domestic if they merely undergo late-stage finishing, “skirting a congressional requirement to produce key weapons materials in the United States.”

And they “chided the department for ignoring a congressional requirement to establish a Strategic Materials Protection Board as a means of identifying strategic threats to our defense supply chain,” the statement said.

“Without adequate enforcement of the specialty metals provisions in current U.S. law, the United States risks reliance on foreign sources for metals essential to some of its most advanced weapons for the defense of our country,” the statement said.

“If left unchecked, we fear that the DOD’s actions could threaten the continued existence of domestic specialty metals industry, leaving the DOD reliant on foreign sources,” Bayh and Clinton stated.

“The strategic and specialty metals industries employ tens of thousands of Americans, representing a bright spot in our eroding defense industrial base,” Bayh and Clinton added. “Not only do these workers manufacture vital strategic materials, they are worldwide leaders in innovation, research, and development. However, without the guarantees of the current law on specialty metals, the U.S. would lose these jobs and the technological expertise that comes with them.”

Posted 5/9/2008