Executive Summary
The U.S. defense-industrial base (DIB) faces existential challenges. Critical munitions stocks have been depleted just as major security threats loom from China and around the world. Established defense primes appear unable to accelerate production to meet the requirements of a major conflict, and upstart “defense tech” firms appear as yet unready to take up the mantle.
What might be done to overcome these limitations in an exceedingly short timeframe? This paper aims to overcome the black-and-white discourse that too often paints the established primes or upstart entrants as heroes or villains. Instead, it focuses on characterizing some of the successes of the defense tech space and proposing policy interventions that might scale those successes more widely throughout the DIB.
The paper proposes three ideas that push the boundaries of the flexible, modular paradigm of manufacturing adopted by companies like Saronic and Anduril and promise faster, scaled production of munitions and platforms:
- First, we recommend the establishment of a Strategic Substitutions Office (SSO) within the Department of War (DOW). The SSO would be created to test how far modular manufacturing might be used to accelerate production of successively more complex and “exquisite” systems.
- Second, we propose that a defense firm’s inability or slowness to adopt and implement autonomy be treated as a deficiency warranting discipline by the DOW.
- Third, we highlight how Defense Production Act funds might be allocated to encourage modularity within the U.S.’s peacetime manufacturing base in order to improve the speed of conversion to wartime production in the event of a major conflict.
