Gen. Dan Caine pleads with defense contractors to build weapons ‘faster’

[mystery-ak]

 Gen. Dan Caine pleads with defense contractors to build weapons ‘faster’
By Emily Goodin
Published July 14, 2026
Updated July 14, 2026, 6:10 p.m. ET

CARLISLE, Pa. — Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pleaded with defense contractors to “go faster” as fears grow that the country’s stockpile of weapons is dangerously low after a series of attacks on Iran.

“What I need you to know — and I know this is simple for me to say but hard to do — but go faster, please, go faster, think bolder,” he told the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit.

“We all need to deliver quality weapons, delivered on time with shortage of lead times and lower costs,” he said.

Defense contractors gathered at the US Army War College to discuss the future of warfare and hear from government officials about the needs of the American military.

The message from Caine and other Pentagon officials was about the changing nature of the battlefield. Technology like drones can be built quickly in massive numbers, they warned, shifting the strength of weapons to quantity over quality.

“Quantity can be built, networked and employed faster than it could before. We see this emerging all over the world right now in today’s battlefield,” Caine said.

“The new reality of modern warfare, my friends, is competition at a speed and velocity that we haven’t planned for,” he warned.

Caine’s message came as the US launched more strikes against Iran. The chairman moved up his scheduled speech time from 4 pm to 11 am, making a quick swing through the state, before returning to Washington as the US military reinstated a crippling naval blockade on Iranian ports.

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https://nypost.com/2026/07/14/world-news/gen-dan-caine-pleads-with-defense-contractors-to-build-weapons-faster/

[DefiantMassRINO]

You can't undo 35 years of Government's bad industrial policy with a snap of the fingers.

With Free Trade and Globalism, the Chinese Communist Party has hollowed out the Defense-Industrial Complex that allowed us to win WWWI, WWII, the Cold War, and the First Gulf War.

Beware of Chi-com useful idiots selling Globalism, Free Trade, and Global Climate Change.

I hope the cheap sneakers and iPhones were worth selling out America and American workers.

[Timber Rattler]

Goes right back to that "Last Supper" story I keep posting...the U.S. government, beginning with the Clinton Administration, has effectively destroyed this country's military industrial base, and now somehow wants it to magically reappear over night. 

Quite frankly, this is a Congressional problem, and Congress has to do the proper authorizing and appropriating to build it back up, and that takes years because these are major capital investments!

Once again, here we go!

'The last supper': How a 1993 Pentagon dinner reshaped the defense industry

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-a-1993-pentagon-dinner-reshaped-the-defense-industry

CHAKRABARTI: Mr. Augustine, you were just describing how at this last supper, Bill Perry had this chart. And it showed various categories of military equipment and spending. Bombers, submarines, tanks, things like that. And then there was one column that showed how many companies were currently providing that equipment. Like, say, I believe in the early 90s, there were like three main companies that were providing equipment for bombers, let's say. And then Perry had a second column that showed how many the Pentagon felt like they could keep in business or that they would need in the coming years, post-Cold War. And in some of those columns, there was just the number one. Do I have that right?

AUGUSTINE: That's accurate. Needless to say, I was stunned, for really two reasons. One, it pointed to how fragile our defense industrial base was going to become. But there was another factor that to me was also important, that in those areas there would not be competition. I happen to be a strong believer in competition. The free enterprise system, I think has served our country well. And apparently we were in such a financial position where we weren't going to be able to afford that and in some areas.

CHAKRABARTI: So then what did Aspen and Perry tell this gathering of CEOs from the defense industry? Like this is what's happening. The defense budget is going to decline. This is how many companies that we can continue to work with. Did they have any recommendations of what you should do as you filed out of the room?

AUGUSTINE: They did. They had made very clear what they could afford and they were going to pay for companies that had one third of all factories and inefficiencies to go with that. And they said that the government was not in the business of redesigning companies or consolidating industries or putting people in or out of business. That was up to us, the CEOs of the companies that were in the industry at the time.

And that was quite an awakening, they heard from the Defense Department on how small an industry would be afforded. And I should add to that that in serious war time, the defense industrial base is really the national industrial base. And it too had manufacturing was severely declining at the same time. And in 1980, 18% of the workforce in the nation was in the manufacturing world. Shortly after the Last Supper it was 7%. So the commercial industrial base was declining and the defense industrial was going to decline. Big worry for any future need for large scale military equipment.

So thus, here we are, 30 years later with fewer ships, fewer planes, fewer missiles, fewer munitions, fewer defense contractors, fewer shipyards, fewer factories, and fewer options.

But yet, wars all over the place now. 

So much for the "End of History," the "New World Order," and the "Peace Dividend."

[mystery-ak]

Trump, Hegseth and other military leaders to announce major defense investments at summit

President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and other key military and diplomatic leaders are headlining a defense summit at the U.S. Army War College on Wednesday where Trump is expected to tout major defense investments.

The summit will also feature Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Secretary Dan Driscoll; CIA Director John Ratcliffe and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz.

The expected defense investments come as recent U.S. strikes in Iran have reduced American stocks of Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot and THAAD interceptors.

Also expected to attend are major industry leaders like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet, General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, SpaceX director Antonio Gracias and Palantir chief technology officer of analytics Shyam Sanka.

The Associated Press contributed to this post.
Posted by Robert McGreevy