The Defense Production Act is a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 law enacted on September 8, 1950, in response to the start of the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

. It was part of a broad civil defense

Civil defense

Civil defense, civil defence or civil protection is an effort to protect the citizens of a state from military attack. It uses the principles of emergency operations: prevention, mitigation, preparation, response, or emergency evacuation, and recovery...

 and war mobilization

Mobilization

Mobilization is the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Prussian army during the 1850s and 1860s. Mobilization theories and techniques have continuously changed...

 effort in the context of the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

. Its implementing regulations, the Defense Priorities and Allocation System (DPAS), are located at 15 CFR

Code of Federal Regulations

The Code of Federal Regulations is the codification of the general and permanent rules and regulations published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government of the United States.The CFR is published by the Office of the Federal Register, an agency...

 §§700 to 700.93. The Act has been periodically reauthorized and amended, and remains in force as of 2009.

The Act contains three major sections. The first authorizes the President

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 to require businesses to sign contracts or fulfill orders deemed necessary for national defense. The second authorizes the President to establish mechanisms (such as regulations, orders or agencies) to allocate materials, services and facilities to promote national defense. The third section authorizes the President to control the civilian economy so that scarce and/or critical materials necessary to the national defense effort are available for defense needs.

The Act also authorizes the President to requisition property, force industry to expand production and the supply of basic resources, impose wage and price controls, settle labor disputes, control consumer and real estate credit, establish contractual priorities, and allocate raw materials to aid the national defense.

The President's authority to place contracts under the DPA is the part of the Act most often used by the Department of Defense

United States Department of Defense

The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

 (DOD) since the 1970s. Most of the other functions of the Act are administered by the Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security (SIES) in the Bureau of Industry and Security

Bureau of Industry and Security

The Bureau of Industry and Security is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce which deals with issues involving national security and high technology. A principal goal for the bureau is helping stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, while furthering the growth of United...

 in the Department of Commerce

United States Department of Commerce

The United States Department of Commerce is the Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth. It was originally created as the United States Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14, 1903...

.

Korean War-era usage

The DPA was used during the Korean War to establish a large defense mobilization infrastructure and bureaucracy. Under the authority of the Act, President Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

 established the Office of Defense Mobilization

Office of Defense Mobilization

The Office of Defense Mobilization was an independent agency of the United States government whose function was to plan, coordinate, direct and control all wartime mobilization activities of the federal government, including manpower, economic stabilization, and transport operations...

, instituted wage and price controls

Incomes policy

Incomes policies in economics are economy-wide wage and price controls, most commonly instituted as a response to inflation, and usually below market level.Incomes policies have often been resorted to during wartime...

, strictly regulated production in heavy industries such as steel and mining, and ordered the disperal of wartime manufacturing plans across the nation.

The Act also played a vital role in the establishment of the domestic aluminum and titanium industries in the 1950s. Using the Act, DOD provided capital and interest-free loans, and directed mining and manufacturing resources as well as skilled laborers to these two processing industries.

Use as innovation tool

Beginning in the 1980s, DOD began using the contracting and spending provisions of the DPA to provide seed money to develop new technologies. Using the Act, DOD has helped to develop a number of new technologies and materials, including silicon carbide

Silicon carbide

Silicon carbide , also known as carborundum, is a compound of silicon and carbon with chemical formula SiC. It occurs in nature as the extremely rare mineral moissanite. Silicon carbide powder has been mass-produced since 1893 for use as an abrasive...

 ceramics, indium phosphide

Indium(III) phosphide

Indium phosphide is a binary semiconductor composed of indium and phosphorus. It has a face-centered cubic crystal structure, identical to that of GaAs and most of the III-V semiconductors....

 and gallium arsenide

Gallium(III) arsenide

Gallium arsenide is a compound of the elements gallium and arsenic. It is a III/V semiconductor, and is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, infrared light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, solar cells and...

 semiconductor

Semiconductor

A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...

s, microwave

Microwave

Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...

 power tubes, radiation-hardened microelectronics, superconducting wire, and metal composites.

On August 16, 2011, President Barack Obama announced an interagency initiative between the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Energy and Navy to use the DPA to stimulate commercialization and production of advanced drop-in biofuels.http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/SupportDocuments/DPASignedMOUEnergyNavyUSDA.pdf