50 U.S.C. § 98h–5 — Biennial report on stockpile requirements

(a) By January 15 of every other year, the Secretary of Defense must send Congress a report on stockpile requirements. Each report must include (1) the Secretary's recommendations on what the stockpile needs, and (2) the matters listed in subsection (b). (b) Each report must lay out the national emergency planning assumptions behind the Secretary's recommendations. These assumptions must be based on a military conflict scenario matching the one the Secretary uses for budgeting and defense planning. The assumptions must cover: (1) how long and intense the assumed conflict is; (2) what military forces would be mobilized; (3) expected losses from enemy action; (4) the military, industrial, and essential civilian needs the emergency would create; (5) how much strategic and critical material would be available from foreign sources during mobilization, the conflict, and the recovery period after, accounting for possible shipping losses; (6) how much strategic and critical material the U.S. could produce domestically during that same period, also accounting for possible shipping losses; and (7) what civilian austerity measures mobilization and conflict would require. (c) Stockpile requirements must be based on the strategic and critical materials needed to replace or replenish, within three years after the conflict scenario ends, all the munitions, combat support items, and weapons systems the country would need afterward. (d) Each report must also examine how different mobilization periods — under the same conflict scenario, plus a range of other, potentially more serious threat scenarios — would change the Secretary's recommendations. (e) The President must submit, along with each report, a statement of plans for meeting the Secretary's recommendations. (f) Briefings on shortfalls: (1) By March 1 each year, the Stockpile Manager must brief the congressional defense committees on strategic and critical materials that (A) the most recent stockpile requirements report identified as being in shortfall, and (B) whose acquisition or disposal is included in the coming year's Annual Materials and Operations Plan. (2) Each briefing must include (A) a list and description of those materials, including what acquiring more would accomplish; (B) an estimate of any extra funding needed; (C) an assessment of each material's supply chain and its risks; (D) a list of the materials that are the highest near-term priority to acquire; (E) confirmation that the Stockpile Manager is using the most complete and accurate data from the military departments, plus — one time only — a description of the risks from the armed services not being able to supply complete data; and (F) the amounts Congress has appropriated to the stockpile for the current and previous fiscal years.