Could the U.S. run out of weapons in wartime?
It’s a question that most civilians—living with the distant memory of the American manufacturing might that helped win World War II—have not had to seriously ponder.
But speak to defense industry insiders, who, facing dirt-cheap enemy drones, geopolitical foes with manufacturing capacity exceeding our own, and a tepid U.S. industrial base, and they’ll tell you: It’s a real worry. And it has propelled many pro-defense tech titans to found companies that they believe can resurrect the Arsenal of Democracy.
In the face of a rising China, a hot war in Iran, and an assertive Russia, this new defense tech class sees America’s preparedness for war as suffering from a twofold problem: a lack of modern warfighting tools, and an inability to manufacture those tools at the volume needed to guarantee victory. And they’re trying to do something about it.
