Advantage in time-based military-technological competitions is derived from the defense industry’s ability to quickly translate technology into military capability. In an era of great-power rivalry, is the decisive U.S. weakness not the absence of strategy, but the inability to build and field capacity at the required speed and scale? While the traditional network of organizations and resources requires continual investment, there is a critical need for a more aggressive stance to inject near-term energy into the sector. What immediate changes in policy, economic investment, and technological decisions can the DoW implement to alter the traditional, slow-moving trajectory of the industrial base? Furthermore, how do acquisition delays, supply-chain fragility, and production shortfalls lead to concrete strategic consequences, and do these industrial limitations now define the outer boundary of what U.S. deterrence strategy can realistically achieve? How can the United States transform its relatively consolidated defense industry to meet emerging military challenges and ensure long-term economic health by adjusting its current procurement strategy? Ultimately, what are the barriers to managing uncertainty within the traditional aerospace and defense structures, and how can immediate, aggressive investments better prepare this industrial base to respond to and support a protracted war?
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- Beers uses Boeing as a case study to demonstrate the dangerous dynamics of a highly consolidated defense industry. Following its merger with McDonnell Douglas, Boeing effectively became an aerospace monopoly in the U.S. and was subsequently deemed "too big to fail". This market consolidation gave Boeing outsized political power, which it used to aggressively lobby Congress to reduce Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulatory oversight by expanding the Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) program. This incongruous dynamic—where the manufacturer was essentially regulating itself—allowed Boeing to conceal the flawed MCAS system from independent scrutiny, ultimately resulting in 346 deaths. To transform this environment and prevent monopolistic corporations from unduly influencing their own regulators, Beers recommends instituting a strict two-year cooling-off period to close the "revolving door" between government regulators and industry, and removing the ability for public corporations to inject money directly into Congress.
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Hunt, Joshua, "Net Assessment of Sino-US Defense Industrial Base Resilience, 1991-2035," Air Force Fellows Paper, 2020, 30 pgs.
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Ide, Keith R., "The Key to Qui Tams: Initial Assessment Criteria," GCPME 2022, 68 pgs.
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Moss, Tyler M., "Guns, Butter and Narratives: The Real Version of Rock, Paper, Scissors," SAASS thesis, 2025, 84 pgs.
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Moss addresses this by diagnosing that the current U.S. DIB operates at a peacetime tempo suited for low-intensity conflict, creating a severe vulnerability where the U.S. would likely face an "empty bins" scenario for critical standoff munitions within a week of a peer conflict. To achieve industrial preparedness, Moss identifies that the U.S. critically requires supply chain resiliency—specifically access to rare earth elements (REE), cobalt, and lithium—and must mitigate risk by diversifying resource reliance globally. He concludes that the U.S. must balance "guns and butter" by building economies of scale through strategic international partnerships, which offsets high production costs while ensuring the U.S. maintains a competitive, flexible, and resilient industrial advantage during a protracted war.
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