Morgan Bazilian, and Jahara Matisek
The 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS) finally admits what has become painfully obvious: the American defense industrial base (DIB) is broken, and industrial power is once again at the forefront of great power competition. The NDS correctly frames production capacity, supply chain resilience, and manufacturing speed as central to deterring adversaries. In that sense, the NDS reflects a long-overdue shift from a post-Cold War mindset of efficiency to a great-power mindset of endurance, calling for a “once-in-a-century revival of American industry” through reshoring strategic capabilities and supercharging the DIB.
While the diagnosis is accurate, the treatment plan is insufficient. The NDS comes across as overly aspirational, with exhortations to empower innovators, adopt artificial intelligence, clear outdated bureaucratic hurdles, and leverage allied production. It’s the right thinking, but it is not commensurate with the scale of the structural problem facing the US military. For instance, the United States has invested $4.9 billion in new munitions production lines since the Ukraine conflict began. Yet it fell short of its 2025 goal of producing 100,000 155mm artillery shells per month, achieving only around 40,000.
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