This entry is a subentry of Procurement.
Since the 1790s, the American army has procured ordnance through a mixed system of government and private manufacturers. Anxious to have a domestic source of weapons, it established early government arsenals to turn out muskets. These arsenals produced only a small quantity of weapons when the nation faced possible war with France in 1798. As a result, the army contracted for additional firearms from private entrepreneurs. Only a few of the manufacturers completed their contracts, but a precedent had been established for utilizing the private sector to supplement government production.
In the first part of the nineteenth century, the army adopted a policy of expanding its arsenals and of retaining private firms on a long‐term basis. The Ordnance Department evolved an ideology of uniformity in the manufacture of arms in both arsenals and private firms that developed and spread the principles of the so‐called “American System of Manufacturing,” characterized by mass production of standardized interchangeable parts and tighter management control and supervision.
In the Civil War, because of the rapid buildup of the Union army, government arsenals and private contractors were unable to meet initial goals, forcing the army to purchase firearms in Europe. By 1863, however, the combination of profitable contracts for private firms and increased production at arsenals enabled domestic production to exceed demand. After the Civil War, government contracts for weapons were practically suspended and the army depended upon its arsenals.
In the two world wars, the army relied heavily on private firms for its weapons once its arsenals lacked the capacity to meet the demands of modern war and it was not deemed wise to build expensive huge arsenals for war production that would largely stand idle in peacetime. During World War II, private arms firms like the Winchester Company and the Remington Arms Company were major suppliers of weapons, as were firms not usually involved in arms production like the Chrysler Corporation, the General Electric Company, the General Motors Corporation, and the Singer Sewing Machine Company.
During the 1960s, the Department of Defense, in an effort to end the long‐standing rivalry between combat soldiers and military technicians by separating design and doctrine development from production, drastically reduced the army's own production capacity. Since then, the army has relied primarily on a group of quasi‐public industrial suppliers for weapons (the army still produces weapons today at the Rock Island, Illinois, and Waterville, New York, arsenals). These suppliers, such as the General Dynamics Corporation and the United Defense Company, while private corporations, often use government‐owned equipment and depend heavily on government contracts.
The mixed system has generally worked well in ordnance procurement. Government arsenals set production standards, improved production methods, trained technicians, and provided data on costs, while private firms contributed improved designs and production methods and the industrial base for large‐scale production in wartime. But in recent years the expanded reliance on private firms has prompted concern that undue pressure can be exercised in favor of special economic interests in the selection of weapons.
[See also Industry and War
Bibliography
- James A. Huston, The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775–1953, 1966.
- Merritt Roe Smith,
Military Arsenals and Industry Before World War I , in B. Franklin Cooling, ed., War Business, and American Society: Historical Perspectives on the Military‐Industrial Complex, 1977
