{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=7F8BE2A3-4ADA-46FD-96F4-34DBEDD4A09E", "McConnell Remarks at CSIS Global Security Forum on Defense Innovation", "2025-05-13", "2025", "2025-05", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, addressed the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Global Security Forum today in Washington, D.C. Below are the Senator\u2019s remarks as prepared for delivery:\n\n\u201cIf I told you that the West\u2019s greatest strategic adversary was outpacing America in critical sectors like shipbuilding, hypersonic weapons, and unmanned systems\u2026\n\n\u201cIf I told you this adversary was helping the largest state sponsor of terrorism skirt sanctions and pour more resources into the proxies who sow chaos across the Middle East, target U.S. personnel, and shut down a major artery of global trade\u2026\n\n\u201cIf I told you that both of them \u2013 along with an erratic, nuclear-armed hermit kingdom \u2013 were helping a neo-Soviet imperialist wage an unprovoked war in the backyard of America\u2019s closest allies and trading partners\u2026\n\n\u201cAnd if I told you that this has been going on for years\u2026You might expect to see a greater sense of urgency in Washington.\n\n\u201cInstead, the chasm between the threats we face and what we\u2019re doing to meet them is wide. And it ought to terrify us.\n\n\u201cA Chinese authoritarian calls American hegemony the product of \u2018fascist forces.\u2019 A Russian despot calls the former a \u2018dear friend.\u2019 And yet, as our adversaries drew closer together, influential members of both parties have chosen to pick fights with our allies and partners or consoled themselves with the na\u00efve fantasy that we can retreat to Fortress America while spending a historically tiny fraction of our GDP on defense.\n\n\u201cNow that I have your attention\u2026 I\u2019m grateful for the opportunity to be with all of you today. There\u2019s a great deal to discuss. We\u2019re here, in particular, to talk about innovation. That\u2019s time well spent.\n\n\u201cAmerica won the Cold War thanks in part to the way we exploited our technological military and economic advantage over the Soviet Union. Back then, we recognized that investing in technological superiority to deter conflict was less costly than fighting one. As a share of GDP, defense spending hit 37% at the height of World War II, 13.8% during Korea, and 9.1% during Vietnam. The Reagan buildup hit 6%. All told, the Cold War drove an annual average of 7.5%. That level of spending didn\u2019t just keep the peace; it ushered in an unprecedented period of prosperity for the United States and the free world. It was worth it.\n\n\u201cToday, we\u2019re spending less than half of what we did during the Reagan build-up \u2013 3% -- and we\u2019re getting less for it. Every year, a smaller and smaller percentage goes to buy actual military capabilities.\n\n\u201cIn and out of government, talented people are still thinking about what tomorrow\u2019s battlefield will look like, and what it will require of America\u2019s military and of our allies. And there are conversations worth having about harnessing these talents more effectively. About keeping American and Western technologies at the cutting edge. About making sure that future capabilities don\u2019t die on the vine (or in the Valley of Death).\n\n\u201cThe bureaucracies and processes that slow the development, acquisition, and integration of new weapons systems are in desperate need of reform. But advanced, autonomous systems have not supplanted the traditional ways of war. Presence, personnel, logistics, and mass still matter. And neglect for the fundamental realities of hard power has left us playing from behind in some important ways.\n\n\u201cToday, we must do multiple things at once. First, our approach to innovation across industry must be: yes, and we should continue to encourage new entrants into the defense ecosystem. But we shouldn\u2019t be blind to their challenges of fielding novel combat-capable systems at scale.\n\n\u201cOf course, many technologies don\u2019t pan out. Many startups fail. They are worth the investment and the risk. Legacy defense manufacturers are also still critical, and it\u2019s na\u00efve to pretend otherwise. But that doesn\u2019t mean glossing over the need for the primes to pick up the pace.\n\n\u201cWe need talented engineers, patriotic developers, and highly-skilled employees on the job across the defense enterprise. It\u2019s yes, and. If we pretend otherwise, the only ones who stand to gain are America\u2019s adversaries.\n\n\u201cA lot of ink has been spilled about the technologies and concepts transforming modern war\u2026about unmanned and autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, disinformation, and the gray zone. But the experience of modern war in eastern Europe and the Middle East reminds us that the depth of our magazines remains as decisive as any single cutting-edge capability. Quantity has a quality all its own.\n\n\u201cOne of the greatest strategic challenges we\u2019re facing today is the prospect of high-end conflict or simultaneous conflicts in different theatres that would strain the depth of our arsenal and the resilience of our supply lines. Victory would depend on delivering at scale and in time. Our magazines aren\u2019t deep enough to fight such a war. And if we don\u2019t make overdue investments in expanding our production capacity, we may not have the time to manufacture it.\n\n\u201cSo, when we talk about innovation, let\u2019s talk about innovating our mass and our speed. Let\u2019s talk about our supply chains. The only capabilities that can make a difference on the battlefield are the ones that can get there at the speed and scale of relevance. This, of course, is not hypothetical. Just look at Ukraine. Necessity is the mother of invention, and our friends have developed what arguably the world\u2019s foremost drone innovation sector. But even more remarkable is the sustained speed with which Ukrainian producers are honing and refining unmanned systems in real time. As Russian countermeasures emerge and render previous capabilities obsolete, they\u2019re producing new iterations to stay on the cutting edge.\n\n\u201cAmerican manufacturers \u2013 whether new startups or legacy primes \u2013 should ask themselves if they could keep up with such a pace. On the shortcomings of our defense industrial base, there\u2019s plenty of blame to go around. Congress has a clear constitutional role in which we are all too often delinquent. Regular order appropriations are what give industry and the department the certainty they need to plan for the future. And we haven\u2019t been holding up that end of the bargain. But the department has more authorities than it sometimes cares to acknowledge \u2013 middle-tier acquisition pathways, Other Transaction Authority, and the Defense Production Act, to name a few. And when these tools aren\u2019t used the way they were designed, it\u2019s unreasonable to expect improved outcomes on acquisitions and procurement of actual military capabilities.\n\n\u201cOur industry partners, for their part, are right that inconsistent demand signals make their work harder. Services for too long have short-changed purchases of critical munitions.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know of an example where the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee has rejected a request for multi-year procurement authority for munitions. On the other hand, the services have \u2013 for reasons of their own \u2013 downplayed the munitions requirements of combatant commanders.\n\n\u201cTo be fair, under perennial budgetary constraints from above, it\u2019s not surprising that the services have made tough decisions to protect their core modernization and acquisition programs.\n\n\u201cSince Russia\u2019s 2022 escalation of its war against Ukraine, the global demand for essential capabilities like long-range munitions and missile defense interceptors has only gone up \u2013 even if upward trends in annual defense budgets have lagged. And producers of these capabilities do bear responsibility of their own for not having planned sooner to meet the inevitable demand.\n\n\u201cBut let\u2019s be absolutely clear: nothing undermines the prospects of innovation and reform like anemic topline spending. Nothing signals more unmistakably that America is unserious than asking allies to double their investments in hard power while we propose to cut our own.\n\n\u201cIf the administration recognizes \u2013 as it says it does \u2013 the grave stakes of major-power competition, OMB\u2019s budget proposal for the coming year fails to show it. And no amount of budgetary sleight of hand will be able to prove otherwise. That said, this administration can still avoid the self-inflicted crises of credibility that dogged its predecessor. Our adversaries and allies alike are still watching closely for real signs of political will and measurable shifts in the balance of hard power.\n\n\u201cAmerican politicians have criticized partners who used special funds to mask shortcomings in annual defense spending. Well, we should be careful not to mistake our budget reconciliation for long-term commitment, either.\n\n\u201cI support the use of reconciliation to make a significant, one-time investment in defense. But pretending that this procedure \u2013 or, for that matter, a year spent under a continuing resolution \u2013 can make up for failures on predictable, full-year appropriations is as dangerous as it is profoundly unserious. Reconciliation spending may fund short-term operations or investments, but without sustained annual growth, it risks creating massive cliffs in sustainment, personnel, and procurement costs.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re all familiar with the headwinds of rising mandatory costs and inflation, the real drivers of our budget deficit. This is also true at the Defense Department, where such costs eat up a larger and larger share of the defense budget, crowding out procurement, readiness, and modernization costs. Making urgent, nimble, innovative discretionary investments won\u2019t get any easier if we cut the topline in real terms or force the defense enterprise to innovate for today\u2019s challenges with yesterday\u2019s dollars. But you know as well as I do that the consequences of missing opportunities for innovation here at home aren\u2019t limited to here at home. Coming up short on America\u2019s topline commitment to the national defense sends an unmistakable signal to the allies and partners who, for decades, have bet big on American technologies and American leadership.\n\n\u201cWe should not be surprised to see our friends rethinking their integration with American-made platforms\u2026 or, for that matter, American-led security architecture. Least of all, I must say, when we pick fights with them over trading balances. This is particularly true in Europe, where we seem to be punishing NATO allies even though they\u2019ve finally made exactly the kind of defense investments President Trump demanded in 2018.\n\n\u201cIn response to Putin\u2019s aggression, European allies are becoming the stronger, more capable partners the President had urged them to become. NATO allies are sharing more of the burden of collective security. And in the near term, that\u2019s meant a gusher of foreign investment in American-made capabilities. By the tens of billions of dollars, allies have flocked to buy American \u2013 an endorsement of American leadership.\n\n\u201cEven as our allies develop more high-end technologies of their own, close partnership is as essential as ever. I was proud to support the expansion of the trans-Atlantic alliance to include Sweden and Finland \u2013 not as hungry customers for American technologies but as highly-capable industrial economies that recognize the value of interoperability and coproduction.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s little question that our adversaries are working hard to split American and its European allies. If we\u2019re making their job easier, we\u2019re doing something wrong. As history begs us to recall, we don\u2019t get to pick and choose which conflicts will threaten our interests and for how long they will last. And we will rely on friends to help us deter and contain aggression in the coming years, from the Indo-Pacific to Eastern Europe. Going it alone will only increase costs for taxpayers and risks to our warfighters. We should be working more closely with allies worldwide to protect our economies and supply chains from the PRC. If we push these friends away, we shouldn\u2019t expect them to keep buying American.\n\n\u201cOur allies\u2019 desire for interoperability is a tremendous asset. Take the CH-47 Chinook helicopter \u2013 an aging airframe in need of a major update. More than a decade ago, the Canadian government, which has long been delinquent on defense spending, footed the development costs for a new variant, saving U.S. taxpayer dollars and putting an important, updated platform on the apron for the U.S. Army.\n\n\u201cBut let\u2019s be clear: if we let the single most important metric of America\u2019s will to fight and win wane further, we should not expect many allies and partners to make major investments of their own like this\u2026certainly not like the hundred-plus billion in orders under contract right now with U.S. defense producers from our friends in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.\n\n\u201cOur friends understand, as our own leaders once did, that the threats to our shared interests are not contained neatly within continents. Just as Asian allies feel threatened by Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, Baltic and Nordic allies are guarding against China\u2019s meddling in northern waters. As Russia and China deepen their strategic cooperation, France and the United Kingdom are projecting power into the Indo-Pacific.\n\n\u201cWe should welcome, not discourage, our allies\u2019 contributions to global security.\n\n\u201cIf America chooses to deny unmistakable ties \u2013 between the threats we face and between the West\u2019s interests \u2013 we will live in a lonely state of denial. The time to signal our enduring commitment is right now.\n\n\u201cI ought to close on an uplifting note. We have no shortage of bright minds thinking about how to deter and defeat threats to America and to the systems we lead that underpin our peace and prosperity. And for decades now, one of the best has been behind the wheel here at CSIS. I\u2019d like to add my name to the well-deserved chorus of praise for Dr. John Hamre and his leadership \u2013 both in and out of government. When the time comes to hand off the reins of this proud institution, he\u2019ll be able to do so with great pride and with confidence that while the challenges we face are urgent and grave, we have the talent and capacity to meet them \u2013 much of it right here in this room.\n\n\u201cThank you all.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:20:29Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=7F8BE2A3-4ADA-46FD-96F4-34DBEDD4A09E"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9627840481698513, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}