Senators at the Armed Services Committee hearing pressed Secretary Dan Driscoll and Chief of Staff Randy George over what members described as a national munitions crisis and how the Army plans to use its arsenals, ammunition plants and depots to scale production.

Senators described the organic industrial base as essential to producing munitions that private industry may not find profitable to make. Senator Cotton and others referenced specific depots and arsenals; Senator Budd urged expansion at facilities including Pine Bluff Arsenal, McAlester Army Ammunition Plant and Hawthorne Army Depot.

“Given all the money we spend on the Pentagon, it's unacceptable that we would ever run out of ammunition,” Senator Budd said, calling for an urgent plan to restore munitions stockpiles. Driscoll agreed the situation is “worse than I thought” after roughly 100 days on the job and said the Army’s ATI focuses on “modernize[ing] the organic industrial base to generate the ammunition stockpiles necessary to sustain national defense during wartime.”

Committee members asked directly about potential depot closures named in internal memos. Chairman Wicker read aloud a list of facilities that had been listed as potential sites for closure or repurposing, including Pine Bluff Arsenal, Bluegrass Army Depot and Red River Army Depot, and asked whether the Army planned to close them. Driscoll replied that the service is “creating a plan to look at what we can do with them with shifting work from them as one of the options” and acknowledged the need to preserve the industrial base if funding is available.

Lawmakers urged the Army to work with Congress on tradeoffs and on measures—such as workload guarantees or incentives for private‑industry partnerships—that would keep arsenals viable. Senator Duckworth and others flagged Rock Island Arsenal and sought detailed personnel and timeline answers for proposed consolidations; Driscoll said those staffing analyses were still in progress but that he expected net growth in technical capacity in some locations.

Ending: Driscoll and George pledged ongoing coordination with the committee on munitions scaling, depot workload and potential legislative or budgetary steps to modernize the organic industrial base.