March
2024
Reports from both the Pentagon and the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ International Security Program warn that the United States’ defense industrial base is currently struggling to meet the increasing production demands of the U.S. military, even as China intensifies its defense industrial output.
According to the CSIS report, the Chinese defense industrial base is increasingly on a wartime footing. In 2024, China increased its defense budget by 7.2 percent, and is investing heavily in munitions and acquiring advanced weapons systems at a rate five to six times faster than the U.S. At the same time, per the Pentagon report, the US defense ecosystem “does not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience required to satisfy the full range of military production needs at speed and scale.”
Summary
The rapid expansion of China’s military capabilities is likely to shift the regional power balance in the Indo-Pacific away from the U.S. and its allies. However, the push for renewed defense industrial production in the U.S. is related not only to military needs, but also the Biden administration’s stated interest in revitalizing America’s industrial capacity writ large as part of a two-pronged strategy intended to tackle both foreign and domestic economic challenges.
Analysis
