Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of the Department of Defense, said President Joe Biden’s defense budget request of $842 billion for fiscal year 2024 includes about $6 billion in funding to strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base and supply chains, DOD reported Monday.
The $6 billion budget allocation includes long-term investments in the areas of microelectronics, critical minerals, kinetic capabilities, casting and forging and batteries.
Hicks, a 2023 Wash100 awardee, said Monday during a press briefing the proposed budget seeks to continue developing bridges with the traditional defense industry and innovative ecosystem to advance key technology areas such as artificial intelligence, directed energy and quantum sensors.
She noted that the DOD budget request supports the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve to help speed up the transition of joint concepts to experimentation and system deployment phases.
The deputy secretary also cited the launch of the new office of strategic capital within the department to attract and scale industry investments in semiconductors, biotechnology and advanced materials, among other sectors.
