Todd Harrison
Recent wars have exposed a reality that peacetime defense planning often understates: Stockpiles are finite, production does not surge overnight, and success in a protracted conflict depends as much on the ability to regenerate combat power as on the ability to win early battles. This report argues that mobilization readiness—the nation’s ability to convert resources into military power at speed and scale—is a central but underappreciated dimension of military readiness. Mobilization readiness rests on four foundations: economic strength, workforce capacity, industrial capacity, and political will.
The United States retains major advantages in each of these areas, but it also faces serious constraints, including mounting fiscal and debt pressures, limited industrial depth, accelerating technological complexity, and a fractured political environment. The core policy question is no longer whether mobilization matters, but whether the United States can mobilize credibly and at sufficient speed and scale to deter and, if necessary, prevail in a large-scale, protracted war.
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