Out of Ammo: A Two-Year Sprint to Rebuild the American Arsenal and Deter China

Council on Foreign Relations | Rush Doshi

The United States Department of Defense faces severe shortages in high-end precision-guided munitions and critical air defense interceptors, impairing its capacity to deter a potential People’s Liberation Army assault on Taiwan by 2027. Depleted by recent operational commitments like Operation Epic Fury, American stockpiles cannot be replenished rapidly through legacy defense manufacturing channels alone.

To bridge this critical capacity gap within a two-year window, the Pentagon is accelerating procurement of low-cost, expendable "precise mass" capabilities—including short-range attack drones, low-cost containerized cruise missiles, and uncrewed autonomous sensors. Funded partly through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and organized under a dedicated direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned systems, this acquisition shift prioritizes manufacturing speed and production volume over high-end performance specifications. By deploying non-traditional defense vendors and expanding initiatives like the Gauntlets program, Washington aims to establish a rapid deterrence posture across the Taiwan Strait before conventional industrial base expansions mature.

Comment

The pivot towards rapid, high-volume procurement under the Gauntlets program exposes a fundamental tension between non-traditional commercial manufacturing and rigid military software integration requirements. While commercial vendors can easily scale airframes for 300,000 short-range unmanned aerial vehicles, standardising encrypted command links, anti-jamming microelectronics, and tactical data links remains a persistent bottleneck. Mass production of low-cost hardware fails to generate usable combat power if electronic warfare environments in the Western Pacific routinely sever unhardened control architectures.

This integration deficit transfers operational risk directly to tactical communications nodes and spectrum managers inside Pacific Air Forces. Relying on commercial-grade components forces field units to absorb frequent software updates and field modifications, increasing maintenance overhead at forward operating locations like Andersen Air Force Base.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If short-range platforms procured under the Gauntlets program require frequent field-level software patches to counter local electronic warfare, which factor will prove more decisive in littoral combat — manufacturing throughput or forward depot support capacities?

The operational trajectory suggests that forward maintenance capacity will outweigh initial factory output once high-density electromagnetic jamming is encountered in theater. While rapid domestic manufacturing solves peacetime stockpile deficits, maintaining operational availability for commercial-grade platforms at forward locations like Guam will hinge entirely on deployable software reprogramming units rather than raw production volume.

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