Rebuilding the Military-Industrial Base

One of the areas Donald Trump is bringing a renewed focus to is our industrial capacity, specifically as it relates to our ability to fight a real war. For the last 20 years, we've been focused on low-intensity and littoral conflicts. Consequently, the leviathan military industrial base which we possessed from 1945 all the way through the end of the Cold War has atrophied severely.

Armored cars and other manifestations of the so-called "Stryker" light forces concept, along with large contingents of special operations personnel, are all fine-and-dandy for swatting disorganized groups of ragheads, but fighting a peer war -- with Russia or China, for example -- would completely overwhelm our current industrial capabilities. If such a conflict does break out, we'd have to start virtually from scratch, similar to 1942. Trump has appointed people to identify the specific problems and make recommendations to rectify them.

One of the most interesting bits in the article is this:

That suggests a radically different model for military logistics. Instead of manufacturing “iron mountains” of supplies in the US, then shipping them overseas, stockpiling them behind the battlefront, and finally distributing them to combat units – creating targets for enemy strikes all along the way – those units could have 3D printers to make their own spare parts and potentially even food and ammunition. The supply lines would still have to provide raw feedstock of various kinds, but that’s much simpler than delivering thousands of different parts to the right place at the right time.

Dwight Eisenhower once said: "You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics." He should know. He and George Marshall organized the most daunting logistical feat in the history of warfare: retaking Europe from the Nazis. Most people only see World War II as a series of big battles. The reality is that World War II was a logistical accomplishment unparalleled in recorded history. Getting the beans, bullets and band-aids across the Atlantic in the quantity needed for D-Day and the push to the Rhine was a daunting task and completely unappreciated by all but the best-studied historians. And we did that while simultaneously fighting the largest naval campaign ever contemplated... on the other side of the world.

If we can find a way to manufacture those beans, bullets and band-aids in situ from a common stock at the division or even brigade level, it would simplify our logistics chain to the point that any enemy without that capability would be utterly outclassed. I know it doesn't sound very glamorous, but 3-D printing and other variants of on-demand manufacturing may turn out to be the most important innovation in warfare since the invention of firearms: anyone who doesn't have them automatically loses to anyone who does.