(a) Declaration of Purpose and Policy.—It is the intent of Congress—

(1) to provide a comprehensive and continuous program for the future safety and for the defense of the United States by providing adequate measures whereby an essential nucleus of Government-owned industrial plants and an industrial reserve of machine tools and other industrial manufacturing equipment may be assured for immediate use to supply the needs of the armed forces in time of national emergency or in anticipation thereof;

(2) that such Government-owned plants and such reserve shall not exceed in number or kind the minimum requirements for immediate use in time of national emergency, and that any such items which shall become excess to such requirements shall be disposed of as expeditiously as possible;

(3) that to the maximum extent practicable, reliance will be placed upon private industry for support of defense production; and

(4) that machine tools and other industrial manufacturing equipment may be held in plant equipment packages or in a general reserve to maintain a high state of readiness for production of critical items of defense materiel, to provide production capacity not available in private industry for defense materiel, or to assist private industry in time of national disaster.

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(b) Powers and Duties of the Secretary of Defense.—(1) To execute the policy set forth in subsection (a), the Secretary of Defense shall—

(A) determine which industrial plants and installations (including machine tools and other industrial manufacturing equipment) should become a part of the Defense Industrial Reserve;

(B) designate what excess industrial property shall be disposed of;

(C) establish general policies and provide for the transportation, handling, care, storage, protection, maintenance, repair, rebuilding, utilization, recording, leasing and security of such property;

(D) direct the transfer without reimbursement of such property to other Government agencies with the consent of such agencies;

(E) direct the leasing of any of such property to designated lessees;

(F) authorize the disposition in accordance with existing law of any of such property when in the opinion of the Secretary such property is no longer needed by the Department of Defense; and

(G) notwithstanding chapter 5 of title 40 and any other provision of law, authorize the transfer to a nonprofit educational institution or training school, on a nonreimbursable basis, of any such property already in the possession of such institution or school whenever the program proposed by such institution or school for the use of such property is in the public interest.

(2)(A) The Secretary of a military department to which equipment or other property is transferred from the Defense Industrial Reserve shall reimburse appropriations available for the purposes of the Defense Industrial Reserve for the full cost (including direct and indirect costs) of—

(i) storage of such property;

(ii) repair and maintenance of such property; and

(iii) overhead allocated to such property.

(B) The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe regulations establishing general policies and fee schedules for reimbursements under subparagraph (A).

(c) Definitions.—In this section:

(1) The term “Defense Industrial Reserve” means—

(A) a general reserve of industrial manufacturing equipment, including machine tools, selected by the Secretary of Defense for retention for national defense or for other emergency use;

(B) those industrial plants and installations held by and under the control of the Department of Defense in active or inactive status, including Government-owned/Government-operated plants and installations and Government-owned/contractor-operated plants and installations which are retained for use in their entirety, or in part, for production of military weapons systems, munitions, components, or supplies; and

(C) those industrial plants and installations under the control of the Secretary which are not required for the immediate need of any department or agency of the Government and which should be sold, leased, or otherwise disposed of.

(2) The term “plant equipment package” means a complement of active and idle machine tools and other industrial manufacturing equipment held by and under the control of the Department of Defense and approved by the Secretary for retention to produce particular defense materiel or defense supporting items at a specific level of output in the event of emergency.