There is something seriously wrong with how the United States equips and arms our military.
Americans should have realized this on August 29, 2022, when The Wall Street Journal reported that supplying Ukraine with 155-millimeter artillery shells was depleting U.S. stocks of the munition to “uncomfortably low” levels.
Then it turned out something similar was happening with other weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Sending 10,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine has cleared out roughly one-third of the total U.S. Javelin inventory, and will require multiple years of production to replace. It was the same story all down the munitions line—from guided multiple launch rocket systems and Hellfire missiles to ammunition plants in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Kingsport, Tennessee, which needed $678 million to ramp up production after supplying Ukraine emptied the cupboard.
Suddenly, there was no way for the American public to ignore what experts, Congress, and the Pentagon had known for nearly a decade: Our nation’s defense industrial base was in serious turmoil. And in the years since, though the current administration has made efforts to revive our standing, we still have a long way to go.
It wasn’t always like this. During World War II, the U.S. created the greatest defense industrial base the world had ever seen: one that sustained our ability to compete with the Soviet Union through the Cold War.
That has all changed. And the war with Iran and other conflicts looming on the horizon show that we don’t have decades to get things right. Either we correct the problem quickly—within three or four years—or we will surrender our superpower status the way Britain did after World War II, or France after the Napoleonic Wars, and all without a single shot being fired by our leading antagonist: China.
History is informative here. During World War II, the defense industrial base was built because President Franklin Roosevelt gave General Motors (GM) president Bill Knudsen the go-ahead to set loose America’s manufacturing might. From a virtual standing start in 1940, Knudsen and his business colleagues managed to produce, by the end of 1942, more tanks, ships, planes, and guns than the entire Axis.
