The United States served as the “arsenal of Democracy” in World War II, providing arms and equipment to its allies in the fight against the Axis Powers. In 2025, it may not be able to even supply its own needs.
The vast defense industrial base that gave America that capability has been dramatically reduced. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently noted that “Some analysts and policymakers have argued that the current capacity of the industrial base is insufficient for the demands of great power competition. As Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) framed the issue in a 2023 study, ‘The U.S. defense industrial base is not adequately prepared for the competitive security environment that now exists. It is currently operating at a tempo better suited to a peacetime environment. In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait— the U.S. use of munitions would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense, leading to a problem of ‘empty bins.’”
CRS notes that “some analysts and policymakers…argue that certain market developments (e.g., the consolidation of prime defense contractors since the 1990s or the widespread adoption of “just-in-time” approaches to logistics) have reduced the capacity and resilience of U.S. defense suppliers.”
Consider just one key weapons system, tanks. There is only one operational plant that can build them, a facility in Lima, Ohio. During that Obama Administration, attempts were made to shut it down, a move that would have been disastrous.
William A. LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, notes that a resilient defense industrial base is critical to the Defense Department’s ability to deter future conflict. The lessons learned from the Ukraine conflict have driven home the point.
“Very few people anticipated the prolonged, high-volume conflict we are seeing in Ukraine or that we might see again against a strategic competitor. We are relearning just how resource-intensive this type of warfare can be, and how dialing down our production numbers, and the just-in-time delivery model doesn’t work in this kind of conflict. We need a paradigm shift to meet the needs of today and the future fight.”
The inadequate level of production that is being completed contains too many foreign produced parts. Many years ago, in an off-the-record conversation, one of America’s top military leaders told me that foreign-sourced parts were a source of key concern.
George Whittier, writing for Industry Week, noted that “The military and its partners have become too dependent on foreign-made parts, materials, and minerals.”
An American Security Project analysis disclosed that “Chinese equipment has permeated military supply chains for over a decade. In 2012, the Senate Armed Forces Committee found that counterfeit parts from China were being integrated into several critical systems. These included artificial intelligence capacities in the Air Force’s Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft, the Navy’s Integrated Submarine Imaging System, and the Army’s Stryker Mobile Gun. With 1800 cases containing over one million counterfeit parts, the committee’s conclusion was that both national security and service members were being put at jeopardy. Despite these findings, China continues to supply goods and services used by the United States for dual-use and defense purposes. From 2018 to 2022, there were 471 tier 1 Chinese suppliers of semiconductors and related devices to the US defense industry, more than any other country other than the US itself, and 299 suppliers in tier 2. Data analytics company Govini has identified a surplus of Chinese vendors and suppliers in twelve critical technology areas, including biotechnology, nuclear modernization, hypersonic, and space technologies that are vital to U.S. national security.”