By Logan Williams, Warrior Editorial Fellow
On January 11, 2024, the Department of Defense released its first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS). This 60-page document is evidence that the Pentagon has finally begun to understand that the terms “war” and “warfare” encompass far more than what happens on the battlefield. Combat and tactics matter very little if a state lacks the hard resources for war, or if a nation lacks the resolve and the courage of its convictions, as well as the willingness to stand and fight, and sacrifice, for those convictions.
The NDIS is lacking in concrete details, which is not atypical for a DOD publication; rather, the report reflects a series of broad and aspirational commitments, which have the potential to seriously revitalize and reinvigorate the United States’ moribund defense-industrial base.
The authors outline their purpose as follows “The overarching goal is to make the industrial ecosystem dynamic, responsive, state-of-the-art, resilient, and a deterrent to our adversaries…” and to “ensure that we [the United States] produce and sustain the full range of capabilities needed to give U.S., allied, and partner forces a competitive advantage.”
The ambitions of the NDIS are divided into four general categories, described as the DOD’s priorities: “Resilient Supply Chains,” “Workforce Readiness,” “Flexible Acquisition,” and “Economic Deterrence.”
In order to achieve its goal of forming resilient supply chains, the NDIS commits the DOD to increasing investment in spare production capacity, establishing risk-sharing mechanisms to minimize the loss of profit to defense corporations due to the inherent instability of demand in the defense industry, and to proactively engaging small business contractors to expand the defense-industrial base outside of a few, well-known conglomerates.
In order to increase the readiness of the labor force, the DOD has committed itself to working toward expanding apprenticeship and internship opportunities within the STEM fields, to publicizing the opportunities available within industrial trades, as well as to partnering with high schools and universities across the nation to reduce the stigma that accompanies pursuing a career in a trade.
The DOD intends to reform the acquisition process by prioritizing interoperability and export potential of defense materiel to the United States’ allies, and by working with defense-industrial producers to ensure that projects have a clearly defined scope.
Finally, the DOD has committed itself to purging the cancer of adversarial capital from the United States’ defense-industrial base and to “friend-shoring” key defense manufactures.
The Biden Administration’s National Defense Industrial Strategy is, perhaps, the most ambitious statement of government policy since Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared on the eve of World War Two, in May 1940, that the United States would need to build 50,000 aircraft a year to combat the Nazi threat; or, perhaps, it is the most ambitious statement of such policy since John F. Kennedy declared on September 12, 1962, that the United States would put a man on the moon (and safely bring him back) by the end of the decade.
The thing about the United States is, this great nation has the tenacity to see its ambitions to fruition, overcoming all obstacles, to the chagrin of our naysayers. Although Kennedy did not live to see it, the United States did, indeed, put a man on the moon by the end of that decade, on July 20, 1969.
Despite the fact that, in 1940, producing 50,000 planes a year was a certain impossibility, and in the years before the United States had barely produced more than 1,000 planes, Roosevelt single-handedly transformed the United States into the arsenal of democracy. After Roosevelt’s speech, the head of the Luftwaffe (The Third Reich’s “Air Force:), Hermann Goering, declared “No one can build 50,000 planes a year. That’s pure propaganda.” Yet, by 1944, the United States was producing 100,000 planes a year.
The threat that the United States faces, presently, is just as wretched as the Third Reich, and just as intractable – difficult to beat – as the Soviet Union. Yet, this National Defense Industrial Strategy – the first of its kind – should give us hope, it is a sign that the United States is on the right path, and that once again, through grit and conviction, we may overcome. Perhaps President Biden will be remembered in history, alongside these venerated men, as one of the leaders who preserved the American Way, for posterity.
Logan Williams currently studies at the University of Connecticut. He is an International Affairs Researcher; Work Published in Newspapers, Magazines, and Journals, Such As: Geopolitics Magazine, Modern Diplomacy, Tufts University’s The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Democracy Paradox, Diario Las Américas, International Affairs Forum, Fair Observer, History Is Now Magazine, UNC at Chapel Hill’s American Diplomacy, The Center for Military Modernization’s Warrior Maven Magazine,
