Annual Vital Signs Report Increasingly Useful.

• Author: Jones, Nick
• Position: NDIA Policy Points

Nick Jones is NDIA's director of strategy.

* The day after Thanksgiving, I awoke to a cacophony of noise behind my backyard. Hammers, construction equipment, blaring music. I was a little bit alarmed. I took a look outside and it was just siding being installed on the new homes being built behind my backyard. The houses have been sitting quietly for the past four months awaiting the delivery of siding, of which there is a shortage.

I'm told that when the pandemic lockdowns began last March, the producers of raw materials for new home materials stopped production in anticipation of a significant drop in demand. In the case of housing, demand actually increased and the availability of windows, siding, appliances and even sod has caused significant delays--and heartache--for new home builders and buyers.

Like the housing industry--and many other sectors throughout the global economy--the defense industrial base has not been immune to the supply chain hold-ups and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the pandemic's impact on the defense industry is not as easily observable as empty half-built homes and requires a systematic approach to first observe and understand the current situation. The National Defense Industrial Association's upcoming Vital Signs 2022 report provides this systematic approach and will provide an unclassified look at the state of the defense industrial base, shedding light on the industry's business conditions that are not readily observable.

Like the traditional vital signs that we are all familiar with from visits to the doctor--pulse rate, temperature, respiration rate, and blood pressure--NDIA's third annual report, Vital Signs 2022: The Health and Readiness of the Defense Industrial Base, seeks to provide a measurement of defense industrial base well being. It's based on an evaluation of eight environmental conditions that defense contractors must cope with to deliver the goods and services required to support national security and the needs of men and women in uniform. We hope that the report will be easily understood and useful for policymakers, students and the American public at large during discussion of the health and readiness of the defense industrial base.

Moving into our third year of this project, there are a few indications that the Vital Signs series is a useful contribution to discussions concerning the health of the defense industrial base. In the past year, we have had...