Acting army secretary announces ‘manufacturing rodeo’ to tackle ‘weak links’ in supply chain

WASHINGTON — Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle today announced the service will hold an event aimed at finding weak spots in the service’s supply chain, which the service is calling a “manufacturing rodeo.” 

“We need to make the things we need here in America, and to keep making them when demand surges. That’s why I’m announcing today that the US Army is going to do something we’ve never done before,” Telle said today at the annual AUSA conference, marking his largest address to soldiers and industry since taking on the acting secretary role.

“Early next year, we will conduct what I’m calling a manufacturing rodeo, a race between our industrial base partners.” 

Telle did not divulge many details about the upcoming event, but said since the Army has invested “a lot in our organic industrial base,” the service will now hold a competition of sorts between industry where they will “strain” and “stress test” the supply chain to “see where it breaks.” 

“The magic is that this is an early indicator that we’re acquiring a new system of seamless, frictionless symbiosis between the Army and American commercial excellence,” Telle said. “We built those muscles in World War II, but we haven’t flexed them since the Cold War, and as I said, the script has flipped. Take a basic attack drone. We need to be able to make millions of these. It may look simple, but it’s a flying supply chain we don’t control enough of.” 

Though Telle said the Army is focused on modernization efforts such as bolstering its supply chain, he also wants to put an increased emphasis on getting “back to the basics.” 

“I’m going to take it back to the basics, back to the dirt that lies beneath that foundation, because government agencies are in such a race trying to one up each other on the path to technocratic superiority that we often blow right past the fundamentals,” Telle said. “We’re so eager to talk about how we’re playing with the shiniest, newest, most headline-worthy gadgets that we forget what we were trying to do in the first place.” 

Getting back to the basics includes focusing on “controlling and securing land,” Telle said.

“[C]ontrolling land is fundamental to humanity. The Army does it better than anyone, and it’s on us, the people in this room, to keep it that way. Humanity’s connection to the land is biblical, and it even transcends faith.”