Long-term industry trends have strained the capacity of the U.S. defense industrial base to meet the growing demand for arms from partners, alongside the needs of the U.S. military. Adapting to a world of constrained supply and increasing market competition, while simultaneously expanding production capacity and developing innovative military technologies, requires examination of the defense industrial base in the context of arms production for export. Key knowledge gaps include the scale and structure of the defense industry, particularly non-prime contractors, the levers available to stimulate domestic and foreign investment in production capacity and to encourage new firms to enter the market, and the tradeoffs to international armaments cooperation, including co-development, coproduction, third-party licensing, co-sustainment, and third-party transfer. Additionally, research should assess the implications of constrained U.S. supply alongside a growing number of exporters for the prioritization of systems and foreign partners, commercial advocacy and communications, U.S. embassy operations, and arms transfer processes.
- Caldwell, Alysha, "Thinking Small: Maximizing Small Business Participation in Air Force Supply Chain Acquisition." AFGC thesis, 2021.
- Addresses the scale and structure of the defense industry by focusing heavily on small and mid-sized (non-prime) contractors within the Defense Industrial Base (DIB). Caldwell points out that current acquisition processes are time-consuming and costly, which deters non-prime contractors from entering the market and exacerbates supply chain fragility. To encourage new firms to enter the market and stimulate domestic investment, Caldwell recommends several levers, including expanding the Replenishment Parts Purchase or Borrow (RPPOB) program to allow small businesses to reverse-engineer parts, utilizing Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (PTACs) to train businesses on government acquisition, and offering specific financial incentives and reimbursements in contracts to encourage small businesses to assume the upfront risks of source qualification.
- Church, Lt. Col. Marc, "Congruent FMS and 10 USC 333 Strategy for USINDOPACOM," AWC RSS 2024.
- Argues that the U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and partner capacity-building strategies must evolve beyond isolated, transactional equipment deliveries into a cohesive regional strategy. By leveraging existing treaties and developing congruent regional strategies, the U.S. can better equip allies to secure their sovereignty and regional stability without forcing difficult economic or political decisions upon them.
- Conlon, Col. Jeannie E., "The Cobbled Road to Equipping US Allies: A Look at Rotary Wing Acquisition in the Indo-Pacific," AWC SSP, 2024.
- Examines the structural bottlenecks in the arms transfer process and U.S. embassy operations that constrain the delivery of rotary-wing aircraft to Indo-Pacific allies. The paper highlights how the FMS process is often derailed by poor communication regarding host-nation capability gaps and lagging U.S. industry parts availability. To address this, Conlon emphasizes the necessity of international armaments cooperation—such as the U.S.-India GE F-414 engine co-production and Lockheed Martin's KF-21 co-development with Korea—and advocates for embedding acquisition professionals in embassies to proactively guide host nations in defining their requirements and reducing costs
- Cox, Maj. Christopher A., "Military Acquisitions in a World with Rising Chinese Control," AF Fellows, 2021.
- Explores the structural contraction of the Defense Industrial Base, noting that the majority of defense contracts now go to just five major prime contractors, which limits competition, slows acquisition, and creates fragile supply chains. To counter this and encourage new, non-traditional firms to enter the market, Cox highlights multiple levers to stimulate investment, including Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, "Pitch Days" that award on-the-spot funding to start-ups, and AFWERX/Air Force Ventures initiatives designed to attract and match private venture capital. Additionally, Cox suggests decoupling system design from production via digital engineering, which would allow smaller, innovative design firms to enter the defense market without needing the massive capital required to build traditional manufacturing factories.
- De Haas, Lt. Col. Marinus, "Smart Defense: Penny Wise or Pound Foolish--Efficiency Might Not Always Be Effective," AWC SSP, 2021.
- Examines the tradeoffs and challenges of international armaments cooperation, co-development, and co-sustainment, specifically through the European Union and NATO's "Pooling & Sharing" and "Smart Defense" programs. DeHaas highlights that while pooling resources and sharing capabilities helps nations maintain military capacity amid declining budgets, it introduces significant operational and political risks. These tradeoffs include the loss of sovereign control over military assets, a dangerous reliance on foreign partners or private companies for assured access during crises, and the potential for participating nations to "free-ride". Furthermore, DeHaas notes that international armaments cooperation can negatively impact domestic defense industries; negotiations are often substantially delayed as nations fight to secure the largest possible share of manufacturing work for their own domestic companies, and shifting production to a partner nation can cause a state to permanently lose its own indigenous research and manufacturing capabilities.
- Dorans, Maj. Larissa A., "Identifying Barriers to Empower Allies and Partners: What Are the Primary Barriers to Empowerment, Cooperation, and Interoperability for US Partners and Allies," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Through an analysis of the U.S.-Taiwan arms backlog and the Ukraine conflict, she demonstrates that capacity constraints, complex supply chains, and industry consolidation have led to severe production bottlenecks and multi-year delays in weapon deliveries. Because Taiwan relies almost exclusively on the U.S. for defense procurement, these systemic delays in receiving major weapons systems—such as F-16 fighter jets and HIMARS—significantly undermine the partner nation's defense modernization and operational readiness. Ultimately, Dorans answers the question by showing that outdated assumptions about supply chain resilience and industrial capacity act as a major tangible barrier to fulfilling security cooperation agreements and equipping allies for strategic competition.
- Firman, Lt. Col. Robert A., "Security Cooperation and Great Power Competition." AWC SSP, 2019.
- Directly addresses the role of U.S. embassy operations, Security Assistance, and the tradeoffs of international armaments cooperation and co-development. Firman notes that the complex security cooperation enterprise is managed by personnel in Offices of Security Cooperation (SCOs) and Defense Attachés within U.S. Embassies. The paper highlights the challenges and tradeoffs of international co-development by examining a landmark defense research and development (RDT&E) agreement between the U.S. and South Africa; despite offering unique opportunities to enhance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and other capabilities, the co-development effort severely languished because it lacked sustained resourcing and did not align with the overarching regional command's immediate operational priorities.
- Frost, Maj. Ryan S., "Collision Course with China: Considerations for Policymakers in the Western Hemisphere," AF Fellows (State Department), 2021.
- Briefly touches on the implications of constrained U.S. supply and foreign military financing (FMF) prioritization. Frost notes that the American defense industry's manufacturing capabilities are struggling to keep pace with Chinese counterparts, necessitating increased support for the domestic defense manufacturing industry. To better compete globally, Frost argues that the U.S. needs to shift its prioritization of systems and foreign partners by thoughtfully redistributing security assistance and FMF away from the Middle East to more geopolitically strategic regions, and recommends returning the execution authority for these capacity-building dollars from the DoD back to the State Department to empower diplomats and U.S. embassy operations.
- Griffin, Maj. Jonathan R., "Optimizing the CSARTF for the INDOPACIFIC," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- This paper explores the arms transfer process and the implications of a growing number of international arms exporters in the context of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). Noting that countries like China and Israel are rapidly exporting UAS technology without strict controls, the author argues that the U.S. must adapt its export policies to maintain its competitive edge and industry leadership. By expanding controlled Foreign Military Sales (FMS) of armed and unarmed UAS to allies, the U.S. can stimulate its domestic industry, reduce capability gaps among partners, and utilize the transfer process to shape international norms and standards for responsible military technology use.
- Hilferty, Maj. Daniel J., "The Pace of Aircraft Modernization," AF Fellows (DARPA), 2014.
- This paper addresses the scale and structure of the defense aerospace industry, highlighting how program consolidation and reduced defense acquisitions have shrunk the number of prime contractors, potentially hollowing out the DIB's design capability. To stimulate domestic investment and encourage new firms to innovate, the author argues that the Department of Defense must decrease the time between new aircraft designs. By procuring a higher quantity of diverse, shorter-cycle platforms rather than relying on drawn-out, monolithic programs, the U.S. can sustain a viable engineering workforce, prevent single-system vulnerabilities, and incentivize both dominant and non-dominant defense contractors to continuously develop innovative military technologies.
- Hofferman, Maj. Nathan R., "India: A Stabilizing Partner to Ensure a Free and Open Indo-Pacific Region," AF Fellows (Asia-Pacific Center), 2021.
- Similarly addressing arms transfers and co-development, this paper discusses how the U.S. uses Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and technology sharing to empower strategic partners. Having recognized India as a "Major Defense Partner," the U.S. has generated over $16 billion in defense trade with the nation since 2008. The author emphasizes that building robust industry-to-industry ties and identifying opportunities for the co-development and co-production of defense systems are critical levers the U.S. can use to modernize allied military forces, thereby ensuring a networked security architecture capable of competing with China.
- Holder, Maj. Daniel P. "The Necessity of Developing a Secure and Sustainable System of Manufacturing Semiconductors in and for the United States," AF Fellows (Georgetown), 2021.
- Focusing on the critical need to expand production capacity for high-tech components, this paper examines the vulnerabilities of the "fabless" model, wherein U.S. defense firms design semiconductors but rely on overseas fabrication facilities. To overcome constrained domestic supply and compete with heavy foreign subsidies, the author details legislative levers such as the CHIPS for America Act, which injects federal funding to stimulate the construction of domestic fabrication sites. Furthermore, the paper argues that the U.S. must establish free trade agreements with allied nations to promote global co-production and secure the supply chain, ensuring the DIB can continuously meet the growing technological demands of the military.
- Hunt, Joshua D., "Net Assessment of Sino-US Defense Industrial Base Resilience, 1991-2035," AF Fellows, 2020.
- This paper addresses the scale and structure of the U.S. defense industrial base, noting that while the number of major defense "primes" decreased from 51 to 5 following the Cold War, the U.S. market still attracted over 12,000 new entrants and non-prime vendors in 2018 alone. To overcome supply constraints and enhance production capacity, the author highlights that the U.S. government heavily integrates allies and partners into its DIB through the National Technology and Industrial Base, Bilateral Security of Supply arrangements, and Reciprocal Defense Procurement Agreements. This international armaments cooperation provides the U.S. industrial base with a significant competitive advantage in speed, capacity, and innovation potential over adversaries like China, who lack a comparable network of trusted global partners.
- Kitzke, Lt. Col. Nathan, "Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean," AWC RSS, 2024.
- Focusing on international armaments cooperation and co-production, this paper examines how the U.S. defense industry utilizes joint ventures to build allied capacity and offset constrained domestic supply. The author highlights India's "make in India" policy, which has facilitated co-production agreements between U.S. defense companies—such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing—and major Indian firms like the Tata Group. By co-producing fighter wing shipsets and potentially the F-21 fighter in India, the U.S. leverages foreign investment and industrial capacity to develop a formidable partner capable of deterring Chinese aggression, while concurrently shifting critical supply chains away from adversarial nations.
- Lancaster, Maj. James, "The Future of Indo-Russian Arms Transfer: Diverging Interests and a Future Model for Joint Ventures," ACSC RTF, 2024.
- Addresses the tradeoffs of international armaments cooperation by analyzing India's historical reliance on Russian licensed production and its current push for indigenous defense manufacturing. Lancaster notes that while foreign joint development and deep licensing agreements (such as assembling T-90S tanks or Su-30MKI aircraft) offer pathways to boost domestic production capacity, they often fall short of delivering true technological diffusion and self-reliance. The research suggests that to stimulate a broader defense manufacturing base and attract foreign partnerships, the U.S. cooperative models—such as the technology-sharing framework used by Lockheed Martin and Korean Aerospace Industries—serve as a superior standard for cross-border co-development.
- Massey, John B., "Protecting the Supply Chain of US Military Technology," AWC SSP, 2020.
- Addressing the vulnerabilities within the DIB's structure, this paper explains that the modern military supply chain is highly complex and reliant on a globalized economy, where a few top prime contractors issue numerous subcontracts to smaller companies worldwide. This multi-tiered structure creates significant risks, including the introduction of counterfeit electronics from untrusted foreign suppliers and the exploitation of critical military technologies by adversaries. To incentivize firms to prioritize security over mere profit, the paper advocates for the "Deliver Uncompromised" strategy, which proposes making supply chain integrity the fourth pillar of the defense acquisition process, thereby requiring both prime and non-prime contractors to demonstrate robust security practices to win and maintain defense contracts.
- McCaughan, Lt. Col. Ryan, "You Can't Just Ukraine Taiwan: The Imperative to Strengthen Taiwan's Defense Posture," AWC RSS 2025.
- Assesses the implications of constrained U.S. supply and highlights the urgent need to prioritize FMS systems and reform the arms transfer process. Contrasting the reactive military aid model used in Ukraine with the preemptive needs of Taiwan, McCaughan asserts that the U.S. must drastically restructure its FMS pipeline to eliminate production bottlenecks and prioritize the delivery of asymmetric capabilities—like anti-ship cruise missiles and mobile air defense systems—over conventional, vulnerable platforms. To establish a more resilient military supply chain that isn't entirely dependent on shifting foreign politics, the paper recommends diversifying procurement strategies and fostering long-term industrial partnerships.
- McGuire, Lt. Col. Daniel Patrick, "Globalization is Dying and So Is the People's Republic of China: Why the US Industrial Base Will Shape the New World Order," AWC SSP, 2025.
- Introduces the concept of an "International Defense Industrial Base" (IDIB) supported by "Industrial Diplomacy" to mitigate domestic supply constraints and prepare for global deglobalization. McGuire argues that the U.S. must transcend transactional sales and actively integrate strategic allies into a cooperative framework that focuses heavily on co-development, co-production, and co-sustainment. By prioritizing international defense production relationships and leveraging Security of Supply Arrangements (SOSAs) with like-minded partners, the U.S. can identify international manufacturing capacity, resolve sole-source bottlenecks, and build a geographically redundant and resilient global supply chain.
- McWhirter, Maj. Matthew, "United States Embassy Operations in Security Cooperation: Assisting UAE Stabilization Efforts in the MENA," ACSC EL, 2019.
- This paper highlights the crucial role of U.S. embassy operations and diplomacy in facilitating the arms transfer process and building foreign partner capacity. Using the United Arab Emirates as a case study, the author explains that forward diplomatic presence and strategic dialogues help establish the relationships necessary for Foreign Military Sales (FMS). By selling aircraft, munitions, and training through these embassy-facilitated programs, the U.S. ensures the interoperability of allied operational platforms, empowering partner nations to share the security burden and stabilize their regions.
- Moss, Tytus M., "Guns, Butter and Narratives: The Real Version of Rock, Paper, Scissors," SAASS thesis, 2025.
- Directly addresses the inability of the current U.S. Defense Industrial Base to surge production capacity for high-intensity conflicts and proposes "ally-shoring" to overcome these limitations. Moss provides a data-driven framework for selecting foreign partners to integrate into the U.S. DIB by evaluating nine variables, including a nation's industrial capabilities, supply chain resiliency, history and agreements, and shared values. By identifying and networking with states capable of hosting co-production facilities, the U.S. can create economies of scale, distribute the economic burden of defense manufacturing, and build a secure, web-like global production network free from adversary subversion.