Winning Wars Requires Weapons-Grade Funding

America is confronting a harsh reality: China now commands the world’s largest navy (by ship count) and the Russians crank out millions of drones annually. The Chinese fleet is only getting larger while our fleet size is in retreat. Calling Beijing’s military buildup “staggering,” America’s top admiral in Asia recently informed Congress that China is building an astonishing six naval combatants to every 1.8 built by the United States. And the Russians are producing over 300,000 artillery shells per month, while we struggle to produce a meager 40,000 155 mm shells. While our adversaries churn out weapons at a breakneck pace, the United States continues to place orders at a peacetime tempo. This is not just a matter of budgets or bureaucratic squabbles but a foundational threat to national security.

The risk is clear: If our adversaries believe that the United States cannot sustain a high-intensity campaign, they may try to win one. This must be remedied immediately. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s investment in rebuilding the arsenal of democracy is a good start, and the effort must continue throughout the Trump 47 term.

The crisis of our moribund defense manufacturing capability is no longer theoretical (magazines run empty within days in some high-end war games). In early July, the Pentagon paused munitions shipments to Ukraine, reportedly out of concern for our own dwindling stocks. While President Trump’s decision to reverse the weapons pause was correct, U.S. munitions stockpiles are undoubtedly strained.

A U.S. Army Science Board report on munitions (of which I was a coauthor) found that Pentagon war plans have been exceedingly optimistic as to the scope, duration, and level of violence of future conflicts. These rosy planning assumptions are anchored in counterinsurgency experiences that justified small stocks, shrunken forces, and the luxury of time.

But when Russia invaded Ukraine, the world saw the limits of America’s industrial muscle and the folly of defense planning according to arbitrary budget caps set by politicians in budget deals. At the outset of the war, the U.S. could produce only 14,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery shells per month, while the Ukrainians were firing over 8,000 rounds daily. Even after taking emergency measures, we’re still only up to a monthly churn rate of 40,000 shells.

This wasn’t always the case. Prior to and throughout World War II, American factories produced a total of 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, and 86,000 tanks. In just four years, U.S. industrial output doubled, supplying two-thirds of all Allied equipment. Today, the annual production for the F-35 fighter is about 150 aircraft, with production lines running at nearly full capacity. The only high-volume artillery shell plant in the country is a relic from 1940, and the supply chain for inputs into shells and everything from chips to chemicals is globalized, often reliant on, among others, China for rare earth minerals or microelectronics. Just last year, the U.S. Army awarded a contract for TNT used in artillery shells and bombs to be produced in America for the first time since 1986.

Modern war is proving to be as grueling and protracted an endeavor as ever. Even as the U.S. has supported two allies’ wars for years now, Washington is only now waking up to the fact that the defense-industrial base cannot turn on with the flip of a switch, as evidenced by the 2024 National Defense Industrial Strategy.

At the end of the Cold War, America’s politicians decided to consolidate our military manufacturing powerhouses. Since the 1990s, the number of prime defense contractors has shrunk from 51 to just five. Only three companies make tactical missiles, and the same number build fixed-wing aircraft. Just as consequential is that small businesses, which drive innovation, have declined by 40 percent in the defense sector over the past decade.

The result is fragility: depleted workforces, outdated facilities, single points of failure in the construction of equipment, and a lack of manufacturing surge capacity. The post–Cold War “peace dividend” shuttered factories. Congressional budget wars, spending freezes, and sequestration continue to exacerbate uncertainty, making long-term investment risky. The Pentagon’s labyrinthine procurement process, optimized for compliance rather than results, continues to keep commercial innovators on the sidelines.

America’s top military commander for Europe sounded a similar alarm about Russia’s war production amid China’s defense buildup. Testifying before Congress, the European command chief noted that Russia is building combat vehicles and munitions at “an unprecedented pace.” All this even in the face of stunning losses on the battlefield, including “an estimated 3,000 tanks, 9,000 armored vehicles, 13,000 artillery systems, and over 400 air defense systems” in the past year. But Putin is “on pace to replace them all.”

How is Putin achieving all this in short order? According to military leadership, Russia’s economy is on a “war footing” and “will remain so for the foreseeable future.” The Kremlin has “established economic policies to restructure its financial institutions and defense industry.”

This past autumn, Russia announced a 25 percent increase in defense spending, amounting to over 40 percent of government spending and 6 percent of its economy. By some estimates, this means Russia is spending more on its military than all of Europe combined. The result is a reinvigorated Russian defense-industrial base that is expected to roll out 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles, and 200 Iskander ballistic and cruise missiles this year alone.

By comparison, the U.S. in its 2026 budget is only planning to upgrade a paltry 30 M1 Abrams tanks.

Similarly, China’s defense-industrial output -- and overall defense budgets -- is surging. Beijing’s shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times that of the United States. China’s market share in global shipbuilding soared from 5 percent in 2000 to more than 53 percent in 2024, while America’s has dropped to 0.13 percent. This means not only that their navy grows while ours stagnates but that they have a large potential merchant marine and can surge production of military vessels when needed.

This growth in capacity has been fueled by massive annual injections of cash and clear priorities. The Chinese defense budget is hard to evaluate and likely much larger than is claimed, but we know that it has been growing at a clip faster than even China’s economy for well over two decades. The CCP has used this budget growth to fund the expansion of each element of the country’s armed forces and has used military-civil fusion to blur the lines of dual-use tech; further, it has employed what are essentially government subsidies to prop up industry, making it impossible for other countries to compete in construction.

As if another reminder were needed, supporting two allies in Israel and Ukraine, alongside the demands of U.S. operations in the Red Sea, has exposed the enduring weaknesses in military development and production. Ukraine’s persistent demand for land-based air-defense systems and their replenishment, for example, now competes with similar needs in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific regions.

Consider that just the efforts to prevent the Houthis from controlling key shipping choke points have exhausted critical matériel stores. Since October 2023, the U.S. Navy has deployed more missiles for air defense than in the previous 30 years to safeguard our assets, allies, and partners from Iran and its proxies. During a single operation in the Red Sea last year, the Navy used a year’s supply of air-defense missiles in one day.

At the same time that we are trying to deter China from invading Taiwan, we are failing to make the investments needed to establish credible industrial deterrence. This requires convincing our enemies not just of our will but also of our might. But America cannot simply resurrect the arsenal of democracy circa 2025. We must pursue a sharper, leaner, and more expansive industrial base that employs the advantages of the free market.

Yet the opposite may be happening. One report found that venture investors are attracting massive sums of capital to support top-tier defense start-ups. Yet while raising $42 billion in 2023 alone, these top 100 private firms generated just $2–5 billion in total revenue from work for Uncle Sam. Without government work and contracts, venture investors will find other places to invest capital. The defense-tech companies trying to gain access and compete for Pentagon work will then find it nearly impossible to raise private capital and will exit federal work.

The obstacles are immense. Budget instability, program cancellations, and compliance burdens make it nearly impossible for industry to plan and invest. Thanks to Uncle Sam’s ill-fated consolidation, the defense sector is dominated by a handful of giants, stifling innovation and driving up costs.

Pentagon leaders must balance the necessary exquisite platforms -- e.g., jack-of-all trades fighter jets, bombers, and aircraft carriers -- with the urgent need for plentiful expendable and cheap autonomous systems that modern warfare requires. To continue to provide for the world’s preeminent military, we will need to produce a few exquisite, expensive platforms and many small, inexpensive ones -- and much more of both than we do currently.

If we hope for our military production lines to achieve this goal, and quickly, we can’t rely on our adversaries’ goodwill. America’s dependence on global supply chains for everything from uranium to microchips is an ongoing vulnerability. One F-35 alone relies on more than 900 pounds of rare earth elements for its electronics. For many of these elements, China controls all or nearly all of the world’s production and processing. Achieving these massive changes necessitates political will alongside sustained investment.

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What does it take to win wars? The requirements include skilled leaders -- and, fundamentally, the support of the public for their policies -- capable of smart planning, capable forces, joint readiness, sufficient funding, and sophisticated and abundant weapons. Winning thus depends in part on a manufacturing and technological industrial base capable of cranking out weapons good enough to support a protracted conflict, long after the most sophisticated equipment is expended.

Congress’s cycle of continuing resolutions and delayed appropriations will not get us to the defense-industrial base we need. The Pentagon must broadly embrace flexible acquisition, thereby opening the door wide to nontraditional and outside innovators. Washington must rebalance defense investments to prioritize procurement over endless research-and-development roads to nowhere. Finally, bureaucrats must prioritize speed and adaptability over process with the pragmatic acknowledgment that time is more important than perfect outcomes.

The good news is that the government does not have to tackle these issues on its own. We can leverage commercial industry’s technological advancements and the streams of private investment into defense start-ups to bring the Department of Defense up to the speed of modern markets and warfare. To enable this, a good place to start is by cutting bureaucratic red tape, such as the joint requirements process, which seeks to align budgeting with strategic requirements perfectly but is inflexible and slow, elongating the time frame to get equipment to the warfighter. Another is to further reduce bureaucratic malaise by organizing the budget by mission set for simpler oversight and execution. The Pentagon and Congress should also adjust to modern methods by leaning further into fixed-price contracting and multiyear procurement.

Working together with our allies and partners is also essential. The defense-industrial bases of the West have all atrophied together and must be rebuilt simultaneously, but with some differences in focus. Cooperation in R&D, production, and sustainment of key weapons systems is critical to being able to support a long war should it break out for the United States. The rapid repair and resupply of U.S. forces will depend on prepositioned stocks, access to factories and workers, and the sharing of technology and know-how. These are critical calculations that the nation should want Xi, Putin, and Khamenei to think about.

The stakes are clear: If America fails to rebuild its industrial base, it risks ceding the strategic initiative to rivals who are not waiting for us to catch up. For three decades, the Pentagon and Congress have delayed modernization necessary for the sustainment of credible U.S. combat power. With their backs against the wall now, policymakers must not cede American military supremacy to a “dusty death” but must launch a new era of sustained investment to ensure peace through strength.