The Pentagon’s depleted weapons magazines don’t look like those of a military preparing to fight China in two years. Facing shortages for training and future contingencies, Washington has constrained weapons shipments to Ukraine. At home, industry is unable to keep up with demand and the changes needed to counter GPS jamming. But the uncomfortable truth is this—today’s scarcity is self-imposed.
With their custom components and bespoke integration, the DoD’s preferred munitions are more like the artisan products featured on Etsy than the mass-produced weapons that came off assembly lines during World War II.
The Arsenal of Democracy turned auto plants into aircraft and bomb factories by designing—or redesigning—military hardware for producibility. To prepare for protracted conflict, the DoD needs to think like a manufacturer and pursue weapons that leverage existing parts and elastic production facilities.
America has plenty of capacity for the Pentagon to tap. US manufacturing output rose during the last decade, and the $100 billion US electronics contract manufacturing industry already builds complex and competitive products from MRI machines to chip-making equipment. US production of semiconductors—the heart of any new weapon—is growing faster than any other country.
But harnessing US manufacturing capacity demands a different acquisition philosophy. Program officials will need to avoid custom components that create artificial scarcity. Like Dell or General Electric, who maintain quality and control while designing around available commercial parts, the Pentagon needs to build weapons that can evolve with dynamic supply chains. This means moving away from rigidly specified configurations toward continuous testing and qualification processes that enable ongoing evolution.
Three programs illuminate this new way forward:
The Air Force/Defense Innovation Unit Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program shows how modern industrial approaches can enable adaptability at scale. The program designs cruise missiles using modular components and open architectures that decouple software-heavy guidance and sensing systems from physical structures. As a result, ETV can use faster modular production techniques and continuously evolve through software and component updates.
Two other programs are focused on speed and price by taking advantage of existing components. The Navy’s air-launched Multi-mission Affordable Capacity Effector (MACE) is designed to cost under $300,000 per unit at annual production rates of 500-plus while delivering ranges comparable to missiles costing ten times as much. The Navy hopes to achieve these characteristics by taking advantage of existing guidance and control systems, additive manufacturing for rocket motors, and modular designs.
Like MACE, the Air Force’s Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) program is planning to use available components and modular manufacturing to achieve high production rates. Intended for the tough electromagnetic environment in Ukraine, the Air Force wants ERAM to be adaptable and able to navigate without GPS.
Acting like a manufacturer
The normal Pentagon response to munition shortfalls—as urged by many defense analysts—is to try to build more of today’s weapons. But this approach is fundamentally flawed. Even adding a whole new production line at best doubles output, while depleting inventories of custom components and creating artificial scarcity. And as we saw in Ukraine, battlefield innovation can make stockpiles of exquisite weapons irrelevant in an instant.
So, instead of continuing to stockpile obsolescence, the DoD should design a complementary family of weapons from the bottom up that could be built at multiple facilities in wartime. Requirements officials will need to prioritize adaptability and production scale over raw performance. Program managers will need to use open architectures that enable continuous evolution as technology and supply chains evolve. Most important, industry will need to create surge-able, mass-producible designs that align with existing manufacturing capacity.
This bottom-up approach takes advantage of America’s industrial strengths. The US contract manufacturing base that already produces precision electronics at volumes that dwarf military demands. These companies maintain sophisticated quality control and security protocols and offer elastic capacity that can surge when needed. The foundation they provide for weapons assembly could be complemented by component technologies for software, rocket motors, warhead chemicals, and automated manufacturing and 3D printing for structural elements being pursued by a new generation of US defense startups.
Critics will argue that tapping into commercial capacity compromises performance or security. But that misses the point. A weapon in hand that can evolve with the fight is infinitely more useful to US troops than an empty missile magazine and an impressive PowerPoint deck.
DoD acquisition officials should take four key actions to implement this new family of weapons. First, they need to remove policy barriers that hinder using commercial components such as outdated or inflexible technical standards. Second, they should accelerate ongoing efforts to digitize and make testing and qualification a streamlined and continuous process instead of a laborious one-time validation. Third, they will need to organize weapons programs to allow building and evolving mission systems from seekers to thrusters independently from physical structures. Finally, they should write contracts to reward a vendor’s ability to produce on time and at scale over its ability to meet arbitrary performance targets.
None of these changes need new legislation or reorganization. They simply require program executives to direct a bottom-up approach driven by available industrial capabilities rather than arbitrary top-down performance specifications. The ERAM, MACE, and ETV programs prove this model can work. What’s needed now is the will to fund and scale it.
Like Freedom’s Forge during World War II, US mobilization in the 21st century should rely on fundamental American economic strengths like technological innovation, product adaptability, and market-driven solutions. The Pentagon can field a new generation of weapons that leverage these attributes. The question is whether requirements officials and program managers can start behaving like titans of industry rather than art connoisseurs before it is too late.
Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to Hudson’s newsletters to stay up to date with our latest content.