That of the Pentagon exhausted weapons magazines do not look like those of an army preparing to fight China in two years. Faced with lack of training and future contingencies, Washington limited arms shipments to Ukraine. Here, the industry is incapable continue with demand and changes necessary to counter GPS jamming. But the uncomfortable truth is this: the current shortage is self-imposed.

With their custom components and tailored integration, the DoD’s preferred munitions more closely resemble the homemade products featured on Etsy than the mass produced weapons that rolled off the assembly lines during World War II.

The Arsenal of Democracy transformed automobile factories into airplane and bomb factories by designing – or redesigning – military hardware to ensure producibility. To prepare for a protracted conflict, DoD must think like a manufacturer and seek weapons that leverage existing parts and elastic production facilities.

America has a great capacity that the Pentagon can exploit. US manufacturing production pink over the last decade, and the $100 billion US e-contract The manufacturing industry already produces complex and competitive products, from MRI machines to chipmaking equipment. American production of semiconductors– the heart of any new weapon – is growing faster than any other country.

But tapping America’s manufacturing capacity requires a different acquisition philosophy. Program managers will need to avoid custom components that create an artificial shortage. Like Dell or General electricitythat maintain quality and control while designing around commercially available parts, the Pentagon must build weapons that can scale with dynamic supply chains. This means moving away from strictly specified configurations and toward continuous testing and qualification processes that enable continuous evolution.

Three programs illuminate this new path:

The Air Force/Defense Innovation Unit Corporate test vehicle (ETV) shows how modern industrial approaches can enable large-scale adaptability. The program designs cruise missiles using modular components and open architectures that decouple software-heavy guidance and detection systems from physical structures. As a result, ETV can use faster modular modules production techniques and continually evolve through software and components updates.

Two other programs focus on speed and price by leveraging existing components. THE of the navy The air-launched Multi-Mission Affordable Capability Effector (MACE) is designed to cost less than $300,000 per unit at annual production rates of more than 500 while offering ranges comparable to missiles costing ten times more. The Navy hopes to achieve these characteristics by leveraging existing, additive guidance and control systems manufacturing for rocket engines and modular designs.

Like MACE, the Air Force’s Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) program plans to use available components and modular manufacturing to achieve high production rates. Intended for harsh electromagnetic environment in Ukrainethe Air Force wants ERAM to be adaptable and capable of navigating without GPS.

Act like a maker

The normal Pentagon answer to ammunition shortages – as many have advocated defense analysts…is to try to make more weapons with today’s weapons. But this approach is fundamentally flawed. Even adding an entirely new production line at best doubles production, while depleting stocks of custom components and creating an artificial shortage. And as we saw in Ukraine, innovation on the battlefield can build stockpiles of exquisite weapons. irrelevant in an instant.

So, instead of continuing to stockpile obsolete weapons, DoD should design from the bottom up a complementary family of weapons that could be built at multiple installations during wartime. Requirements owners will need to prioritize adaptability and production scale over raw performance. Program managers will need to use open architectures that allow for continuous evolution as technology and supply chains evolve. Most importantly, the industry will need to create scalable, mass-producible designs that align with existing manufacturing capacity.

This bottom-up approach leverages America’s industrial strengths. America’s contract manufacturing base, which already produces precision electronics in volumes that dwarf military requirements. These companies maintain sophisticated quality control and safety protocols and provide elastic capacity that can expand when needed. The basis they provide for weapons assembly could be supplemented with component technologies for software, rocket engines, warhead chemicalsand automated manufacturing and 3D printing for structural elements pursued by a new generation of American defense startups.

Critics will say that exploiting business capabilities compromises performance or security. But that misses the point. A weapon in hand that can evolve with combat is infinitely more useful to American troops than an empty missile magazine and an impressive PowerPoint deck.

DoD acquisition officials should take four key steps to implement this new family of weapons. First, they must remove policy barriers that hinder the use of commercial components, such as obsolete or inflexible elements. 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 enable the construction and evolution of mission systems, from seekers to thrusters, independent of physical structures. Finally, they should write contracts to reward a supplier’s ability to produce on time and at scale rather than its ability to meet arbitrary performance targets.

None of these changes require new legislation or reorganization. They simply require that program managers lead a from bottom to top approach focused on available industrial capabilities rather than arbitrary top-down performance specifications. The ERAM, MACE and ETV programs prove that this model can work. What is needed now is the will to finance and develop it.

Like the Forge of Liberty during World War II, American mobilization in the 21st century should build on America’s core economic strengths like technological innovation, product adaptability, and solutions-driven on the market. The Pentagon can field a new generation of weapons that take advantage of these attributes. The question is whether requirements owners and program managers can start behaving like titans of industry rather than connoisseurs of art before it’s too late.

Read in Break the defense.

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