No Time To Waste: Updating and Upscaling the American Defense Industrial Base Has To Happen Now
By Arnold Punaro
January 13, 2024
The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s ushered in an unprecedented era of relative stability in the world. But this newfound peace among nation states also brought an unforeseen existential threat: at the direction of the Department of Defense, the defense industrial base shrunk, and with it, America’s heretofore formidable industrial capacity.
Unfortunately, the world has entered a new, scarier reality and today, we face a landscape more dangerous and chaotic than at any time in recent memory. The U.S. and its allies are balancing a number of equally-menacing fires across the globe: barbaric terrorist attacks in Israel and a war with Hamas that threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East; an Iranian regime funding proxy terrorist groups to do its dirty work; a war in Ukraine and an emboldened dictator in Vladimir Putin; ballistic missiles being developed by North Korea in order to reach our shores in the Pacific; and sadly, so much more.
Particularly concerning to those of us who have been in national security for decades is the threat from China that has spurred an arms race to develop, innovate, and manufacture new defense tools and technologies at a back-breaking pace. Unfortunately, the U.S.’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ has greatly eroded.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/01/13/no_time_to_waste_updating_and_upscaling_the_american_defense_industrial_base_has_to_happen_now_1004708.html
