Tucked inside the 3,000-plus pages of the National Defense Authorization Act that recently passed both houses of Congress is a provision creating an “Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Armaments Cooperation.” While much of the coverage has focused on acquisition reforms and the bill’s broader politics, this provision sends an important demand signal about the importance of industrial cooperation with allies and partners. 

The United States has engaged in defense industrial cooperation since the early days of the Cold War. This cooperation has included the entire production lifecycle—co-development, co-production, licensed production, and cooperative production (hereafter just co-production for simplicity), and co-sustainment—Reciprocal Defense Procurement (RDP) Agreements, Reciprocal Government Quality Assurance (QA) Agreements, and Security of Supply Arrangements (SoSA), among others. 

While the range of defense industrial cooperation activities has steadily expanded over the past seven decades, the US commitment to pursuing them has ebbed and flowed. The Joe Biden administration was forward-leaning, whereas President Donald Trump’s approach is probably best understood as benignly tolerant. If there was ever a moment to accelerate and expand these arrangements, that moment is now. Done right, it will fill production gaps in the US defense industrial base (DIB), increase the lethality and survivability of the Joint Force, and enable allies to take greater responsibility for their own security while boosting US arms sales. 

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