The report adds that the US defense industry may not be “currently capable of producing the quantities of drones needed for a war with China.”
Like Russia, China’s autocratic regime has allowed the country’s defense industrial base to rapidly accelerate weapons research and development and production, to the point that Beijing is “investing heavily in munitions and acquiring high-tech weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States,” as reported in March. comparison According to CSIS, by contrast, the US defense industrial ecosystem has been in recent decades consolidated into a handful of large “prime” contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheona development that threatens not only to stifle innovation but also to paralyze the production of critical systems needed for the next great war.
“Overall, the U.S. defense industrial ecosystem lacks the capacity, responsiveness, flexibility, and responsiveness to meet the production and combat needs of the U.S. military,” the CSIS report said. says“Unless urgent changes are made, the United States risks weakening its deterrence capability and undermining its combat capability.”
To this end, the latest CNAS report recommends that the Pentagon and Congress work to foster the industrial base for commercial and military drones “to scale up production and create surge capacity” to quickly replace drones lost in a future conflict. While the Pentagon, with respect to Ukraine, has relied on multi-year, large-batch acquisition programs to obtain large “major” munitions and “(provide) industry with the stability it needs to expand production capacity,” as noted by the 2023 CNAS report In other words, the Replicator initiative is explicitly designed not only to provide more stability to drone manufacturers, but also to attract “non-traditional” defense industry players, such as startups like Anduril or drone ship manufacturer Saronic, the latter recently received $175 million in Series B funding to expand manufacturing capacity.
Replicator “provides the commercial sector with a demand signal that enables companies to make investments in capacity building, strengthening both the supply chain and the industrial base.” according to the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon arm responsible for capitalizing on emerging commercial technologies. “Investments in Replicator incentivize industry players, both traditional and nontraditional, to deliver record volumes of autonomous systems attributable to all domains, in accordance with the ambitious timeline set forth by the Under Secretary of Defense.”
“It all comes down to contracts,” Pettyjohn says. “The Replicator has the greatest potential impact when the Pentagon buys something that it holds onto for a few years before getting something new for a different mission set, so that the Department of Defense doesn’t have a system in its inventory for decades. Establishing those practices, getting those contracts, and getting enough money so that there’s competition and resilience within the industry is really necessary to drive innovation and deliver the capabilities that are needed.”
It’s unclear whether the United States will actually be prepared to defend Taiwan when the time comes; as legendary Prussian military commander Helmuth von Moltke famously said, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” But with proper preparation, funding, and training (and a little luck), the Pentagon and its Taiwanese partners may end up successfully thwarting China’s supposed invasion plans by flooding the area with lethal drones. War is hellBut when the next big conflict in the Indo-Pacific comes, the United States wants to ensure that it will be hell, at least for the Chinese military.