The report adds that the US defense industrial based may not be “ currently capable of producing the quantities of drones needed for a war with China.”
Like Russia, China’s autocratic regime has enabled the country’s defense industrial base to rapidly accelerate weapons R&D and production, so far that Beijing is “heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States,” as a March comparison from CSIS put it. By contrast, the US defense industrial ecosystem has over the past several decades consolidated into a handful of large “prime” contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, a development that threatens to not only stifle innovation but hamstring the production of critical systems needed for the next big war.
“Overall, the US defense industrial ecosystem lacks the capacity, responsiveness, flexibility, and surge capability to meet the US military’s production and war-fighting needs,” the CSIS report says. “Unless there are urgent changes, the United States risks weakening deterrence and undermining its war-fighting capabilities.”
To that end, the latest CNAS report recommends that the Pentagon and Congress work to foster both the commercial and military drone industrial base “to scale production and create surge capacity” to quickly replace drones lost in a future conflict. While the Pentagon has, with regards to Ukraine, relied on multi-year and large-lot procurement programs to source munitions from large “primes” and “[provide] industry with the stability it needs to expand production capacity,” as the 2023 CNAS report put it, the Replicator initiative is explicitly designed to not only further provide that stability to drone makers but also to pull in “nontraditional” defense industry players—startups like Anduril or drone boat maker Saronic, the latter of which recently received $175 million in Series B funding to scale up its manufacturing capacity.
Replicator “provides the commercial sector with a demand signal that allows companies to make investments in building capacity, strengthening both the supply chain and the industrial base,” according to the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon organ responsible for capitalizing on emerging commercial technologies. “Replicator investments incentivize traditional and non-traditional industry players to deliver record volumes of all domain attritable autonomous systems in line with the ambitious schedule set forth by the deputy secretary of defense.”
“It comes down to contracts,” Pettyjohn says. “Where Replicator is potentially most impactful is where the Pentagon buys something they keep for a few years before they get something new for a different mission set so the DOD isn’t keeping a system in their inventory for decades. Establishing those practices, getting those contracts out there, and getting enough money into it so there’s competition and resiliency within industry is really needed to fuel innovation and provide the capabilities that are needed.”
It’s unclear whether the United States will actually be ready to defend Taiwan when the moment arrives; as legendary Prussian military commander Helmuth von Moltke is famously quoted as saying, “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” But with the right preparation, funding, and training (and a little luck), the Pentagon and its Taiwanese partners may end up successfully throwing a wrench in China’s suspected invasion plans by flooding the zone with lethal drones. War is hell, but when the next big conflict in the Indo-Pacific rolls around, the US wants to guarantee that it will be an absolute hellscape—for the Chinese military, at least.
