Members of the congressional armed services committees are using their defense policy bills to protect depots and arsenals threatened by the Army Transformation Initiative — escalating tensions in the area where Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) predicted a clash between Capitol Hill and the Pentagon.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its version of the fiscal year 2026 defense policy bill posted today, includes a section that would bar the defense secretary from making any moves “to close, mothball, divest, deactivate or otherwise render inoperable any facility” in the Army’s organic industrial base unless a replacement is already operational or Congress explicitly authorizes the move.
The provision comes after lawmakers on both defense committees and defense appropriations subcommittees spent the past few months demanding answers, in both writing and in person, from Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. Lawmakers say they are concern about the planned downsizing as ATI includes a directive to “review and consolidate operations” across depots and arsenals but lacks specifics.
Lawmakers such as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, have identified facilities like Blue Grass Army Depot (KY), Pine Bluff Arsenal (AR), Anniston Army Depot (AL), and Red River Army Depot (TX) as targets of the Army Transformation Initiative. During a June 18 posture hearing, they argued that proposed cuts to these sites conflict with the Army’s stated goal of modernizing the OIB.
Under the Senate’s provision, halting operations or limiting access to a depot or arsenal would only be allowed if there is an immediate threat to either the workers or the environment; the defense secretary would also need to send the congressional defense committees a report detailing the actions it took within 15 days after doing so.
Depots and arsenals could be downsized if done in the interest of national security — but at least a month beforehand the defense secretary would need to provide congressional defense committees with a notice of intent and justification behind the move, as well as any potential impacts it will have on the OIB and strategies to assuage the effects, according to the bill.
The provision would also require the Army secretary to submit a yearly report on the state of the OIB and its facilities for five years, to include status updates of each, planned alterations and any future investments or divestments.
House authorizers yesterday passed a defense policy bill that would also protect depots and arsenals after adding an amendment by Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) that would prevent workforce cuts at Pine Bluff Arsenal, AR, and Red River Army Depot, TX.
The amendment would prohibit the Pentagon from spending any of its FY-26 authorization dollars toward slimming its workforce at either Pine Bluff or Red River until the Army secretary proved the cuts comply with the law and provided a report including detailed cost analyses.
The report would need to outline the costs the Army would incur by relocating its “white phosphorous ammunition mission” from Pine Bluff and identify capability gaps the organic industrial base could fill, “including with respect to [small unmanned aerial systems], battery technology and brushless motors,” technologies that George has said the Army needs to both scale and drive down the cost curve.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who has fought potential reductions at Pine Bluff with multiple letters to Driscoll’s office and exchanges in posture hearings, has said the facility is the only one in the country that produces white phosphorous ammunition.
In response to concerns over Pine Bluff cuts in the past, Driscoll told Cotton the Army has become “too expensive for ourselves” because of all the constraints that come with working within the OIB, to which Wicker cut in to offer support.
“Mr. Secretary, we also might want to work with you on alleviating some of the constraints you referred to that you mentioned make it more expensive to work with the existing facilities,” Wicker said.
The Senate bill may do just that, as a section later in the text reveals a directive calling on the Army secretary to speed up OIB modernization “to meet the munitions requirements of the Army” by prioritizing its current facilities to build up production lines for different choke points in the munitions supply chain.
The production lines identified include making precursor chemicals that are currently sourced from China, producing “any of the 300 chemicals” that are identified as single-point failures, different-sized ammunition rounds and a second “domestic source of military-grade nitrocellulose,” something Cotton has called on the Army to do at Pine Bluff.
Those production lines, senators added, would have to be set up at OIB facilities that have gotten less than $100 million in “cumulative modernization funding” from the Army in the last two fiscal years and have the right amount of acreage to host development.
“The secretary is encouraged to expedite the establishment of the production lines and shall utilize to the fullest extent possible the existing environmental permits and work expertise resident” at the installations that fit the senators’ descriptions, according to the bill.
Originally published Inside Defense