Defense Industry
US Army Materiel Command turns to private capital and leases for depot production, citing Red River and Anniston projects
At AUSA, Army Materiel Command described how commercial solutions openings and enhanced use leases are being used at its industrial sites, including drone batteries at Red River Army Depot.
The U.S. Army is turning to commercial partnerships and enhanced use leases to speed up work at its industrial sites, Army Materiel Command (AMC) leaders said at the Strategic Capital Initiative forum on 14 October at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual meeting in Washington. The account comes from a U.S. Army story published on DVIDS.
What the initiative is
The Strategic Capital Initiative, known as SCI, is meant to link national defence needs with private capital. It is organised around six strategic pillars, according to the Army. To get around slow acquisition rules it uses Commercial Solutions Openings, public-private partnerships and enhanced use leases, which let industry use Army-owned property.
Lt. Gen. Gavin A. Lawrence, deputy commanding general and acting commander of AMC, said the command is applying Commercial Solutions Openings across the Army’s 23 Organic Industrial Base sites. He listed four lessons: set clear requirements, respect statutory guardrails such as the 50-50 rule on depot maintenance work, build a shared value proposition that accounts for industry’s return on investment, and balance guardrails without stifling innovation. The government, he said, should avoid “bounding commercial industry by our constraints” and should work “at the speed of trust”.
Two depot projects
Lawrence cited two examples. At Red River Army Depot, a partnership with the company Hadrian is to build a flexible battery production line supporting drone production and the repair parts of tactical wheeled vehicles. At Anniston Army Depot, a collaboration with Siemens aims to bring manufacturing of small uncrewed aircraft system stators, and parts for heavy armoured fleets, back onto U.S. soil.
An industry speaker at the forum, Chip Chattelier of FedEx Dataworks, said involving industry early helps partners move toward “predictive logistics intelligence” to anticipate supply chain disruptions.
Context
The forum took place under the AUSA 2026 theme “America’s Army: The Foundation of the Joint Force”. Drone supply chains are a related theme, covered in Albania, Croatia, Japan and five other countries join the US Army’s drone and counter-drone marketplaces.