A PLAN TO REVITALIZE THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY - Unless Congress and the Defense Department act with alacrity, the preponderance of global military power will shift against America and its allies. Nothing less than the security of the free world is at stake. That is why Congress and the department ought to double procurement spending and require the procurement of items that complement large defense platforms commercially, at scale, and consistently.
- Consequences of Defense Consolidation - In contrast, Ukraine shows future wars are not necessarily short and the outcome may depend more on the production capacity of ordinary items like munitions rather than submarines and fighter jets. In a potential conflict with China, whose manufacturing capacity already exceeds that of the United States in most areas, Washington will not have years to ramp production to make a decisive difference.
- Need for Increased Defense Procurement - If the U.S. government hopes to expand the supply base, Congress will need to increase defense spending and likely more than it has in the past few years. While the United States has increased its defense spending in nominal dollars more than tenfold from around $100 billion in the 1950s to nearly $1 trillion today, defense spending as a share of GDP has dropped from 15 percent in the 1950s to 3.5 percent today. The result is that despite a growing defense budget America has a smaller military with older and less equipment than at any time in memory.
- Spending on Hedged Capabilities - The most advanced technologies — AI, cyber tools, autonomous systems, satellite data from space — come more from commercial suppliers and less from defense primes. In fact, the current chief technology officer of the Defense Department has identified 14 critical technologies for national security and 11 of these are being developed by commercial companies — not from government labs or defense primes.
- The Way Forward - The United States can once again be the arsenal for democracy, empowering the free nations of the world to chart their paths into the future in the face of authoritarian powers. But this will not be possible without bold and urgent congressional and Defense Department actions.
- Commercial technology should be a part of the solution because it can be fielded faster, at greater scale, and from more suppliers than specialized military gear including for U.S. partners and allies.
- Today’s consolidated defense industry took 30 years to unfold. Reversing this can be faster but will not be instantaneous. Addressing this threat means acting now since there is a long lead-time to change the structure and capability of defense suppliers.
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4moFor Industry, JADC2 constitutes the “5D Battlefield Integrators” for US Forces. Adding LComs, Coordination and different Weapon Systems with Foreign Frendly forces is complexity beyond belief. Industry can learn from these exercises as it would be the largest EPC projects you can imagine across various continents all interconnected in success or failure. Appears to be an excellent candidate for AI augmentation integrating drones and other autonomous weapons systems, electronic WF, PsyOps, etc which I’m sure it will be.