Maintaining the Arsenal of Democracy.

• Author: McKinley, Craig R.
• Position: President's Perspective

* In 1919, a group of Army officers met at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland and formed the Army Ordnance Association.

These individuals had witnessed first hand the difficulty of developing and fielding major items of equipment needed in World War I. They found it disturbing that the United States had been forced to rely on its allies for many of the weapons of modem war--including artillery pieces and the first fighter planes--because U.S. industry was not prepared to do so.

These original members of the Army Ordnance Association were determined that this unfortunate experience would not be repeated in an uncertain future. They succeeded.

The National Defense Industrial Association is the linear descendant of this original group of forward-thinking patriots who gathered together in 1919, and 1 am proud to have been asked to serve as your new president and CEO. I look forward to doing so and to continuing NDIA's role as a respected and effective advocate for a vital national asset, our defense industrial base.

Those who have preceded me have never forgotten the lessons of the past and the costs of being unprepared. Through the dedicated efforts of that original group, within 20 years President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was able to label the United States the "Arsenal of Democracy."

The U.S. defense industry that evolved after World War II is today widely acknowledged as the best in the world. As one scholar of national security affairs has noted, if a nation "had to choose a 'military-industrial complex' that has stood above all others since the early 1940s, and continues to do so today, the American military-industrial complex would surely be the one most people and nations would choose."

Despite this, the defense industry faces numerous challenges driven by an increasingly chaotic international environment, where new enemies have emerged with different approaches to warfare. Many Americans are war-weary and believe that the nation has been engaged overseas for too long. And fiscal and budgetary constraints are forcing hard choices on our military leadership. Through all of these current challenges, the defense industry has continued to perform despite being largely misunderstood and underappreciated.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term "military-industrial complex" during his farewell address more than 50 years ago. Since then, the image has persisted of a huge defense industrial base that is making a large impact on both...