VITAL SIGNS 2023: Annual Survey Shows Growing Worry Over Health of Industrial Base.

• Author: Stewart, Jennifer

The National Defense Industrial Association has issued Vital Signs over the last three years to encourage conversations at all levels of government and among Americans interested in national defense about the necessary policies and investments required to maintain the superior readiness of the U.S. defense industrial base.

The defense industrial base readiness policy goal is straightforward: to ensure warfighters have the platforms, services and technologies they need so they never engage in a fair fight against any competitor.

This goal is personal for many working in industry. From the largest defense contractors to the smallest defense technology start-ups, many either served in the U.S. military or have family and friends who are serving, and therefore see their work to ensure U.S. industrial readiness as national service from a different angle.

Unfortunately, from a public policy perspective, the gap is widening between the intentions and the outcomes of current policies and processes to improve defense industrial readiness. The capacity of the U.S. defense industrial base to grow its output and to fulfill a surge in military demands stands as a key test of its health and readiness.

Currently, U.S. public policy is not oriented to support a defense ecosystem built for peer conflict. This was a troubling truth during the last 20 years of asymmetric conflict against nonstate actors. In the return of great power competition, this is an unsustainable dynamic.

While the United States talks about the re-emergence of great power competition, China is advancing its military capabilities and harnessing the power of strategic industrial policy. In 1985, China's GDP was only is percent of U.S. GDP. In 2016, China surpassed the United States, and by 2021, China's GDP was 118 percent of US GDP, adjusted for purchasing power.

From this position of economic strength, the People's Republic of China is taking a disciplined approach to re-order the international system--its rules, norms, standards and values--on terms favorable to itself. It is steadily increasing its military capabilities and capacity, including modernizing its nuclear capabilities; honing sophisticated strike, space and cyber capabilities; and building out its navy in "one of the most remarkable and strategically disruptive global defense spending trends in the last two decades," according to the "Fiscal Year 2020 Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress" issued by the Defense...