Becca Wasser and Philip Sheers
Introduction
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine laid bare the challenges the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) faces. The COVID-19 pandemic had illustrated the brittleness of international supply chains, but the lessons learned from that experience failed to translate into action in the defense sector. The conflict in Ukraine served as a stark wake-up call that underscored the limitations of the American DIB. Subsequent insecurity in the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East reinforced DIB constraints as rising requests from allies and partners for munitions, platforms, and air defense systems stressed already thin supply chains and further depleted dwindling U.S. stockpiles. The DIB is struggling to simultaneously meet the current needs of the U.S. military while also supplying its allies and partners across the globe—let alone meet the future demands of a great power conflict against an advanced competitor like China.
America is no longer the arsenal of democracy it once was. The DIB of today is not the DIB that helped the United States and its allies win World War II and prevail in the Cold War. In the more benign post–Cold War environment, the Pentagon bought significantly fewer weapons, which forced the DIB to contract and consolidate. At the same time that the defense marketplace shrank and became less competitive, the Pentagon prioritized budgetary efficiency and waited to place weapons orders when needed instead of stockpiling weapons or maintaining excess production capacity as a hedge. Today, despite the renewed importance of industrial policy to U.S. economic and national security and the Trump administration’s desire to restore American manufacturing prowess, the DIB is beset with chronic challenges that are not improving quickly enough to ensure U.S. and global security. The DIB lacks the capacity to produce a diverse array of defense capabilities at relevant scale, and it does not possess the responsiveness and flexibility to dynamically and swiftly surge production in times of crisis. The DIB also lacks the resilience required to withstand global shocks and the strain of modern conflict. Without significant industrial reform, the United States is at risk of being unable to deter China and Russia from aggression and, if needed, win a future great power conflict.
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