A strong defense industrial base is critical to deterring China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorism—now is key.

Ukraine is only a small part of the picture. A more disturbing challenge is the state of the industrial base for one or more future wars, including in the Indo-Pacific. With growing competition between the United States and China—along with continuing threats from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups—the U.S. military needs to be prepared to fight at least one major war, if not two.27

The requisite capabilities for fighting are essential for a credible deterrent. There are two main types of deterrence in the context of this study. Deterrence by denial involves preventing an adversary from taking an action by making the action infeasible or unlikely to succeed, thus denying the adversary confidence in achieving its objectives. Deterrence by punishment involves preventing an adversary from taking an action by imposing severe costs if the action occurs.28 In both cases, a strong U.S. industrial base—with sufficient munitions stockpiles and weapons systems—is critical for deterring Chinese action.

Yet the United States is not prepared for war, which undermines deterrence. With Xi Jinping in his third term, most likely confident and emboldened, it is unclear what the timelines are for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan—if it happens. For planning purposes, the United States needs to be ready now.29 As the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine highlighted, it is difficult to predict timelines months or years ahead of time. Given the lead time for industrial production, it would likely be too late for the defense industry to ramp up production if a war were to occur without major changes.

Major regional conflicts will expend significant quantities of munitions, likely exceeding current DoD planning efforts. In nearly two dozen iterations of a CSIS war game that examined a U.S.-China war in the Taiwan Strait, the United States typically expended more than 5,000 longrange missiles in three weeks of conflict: 4,000 JASSMs, 450 LRASMs, 400 Harpoons, and 400 Tomahawk land-attack missiles (TLAMs). One of the most important munitions to prevent a Chinese seizure of all of Taiwan were long-range precision missiles, including missiles launched by U.S. submarines. The same is true of ship-based munitions, such as the SM-6, which would be expended in large quantities

LRASMs offer a useful case study. In every iteration of the war game, the United States expended its inventory of LRASMs within the first week of the conflict. These missiles were particularly useful because of their ability to strike Chinese naval forces from outside the range of Chinese air defenses. As the war game showed, Chinese defenses are likely to be formidable—especially early on in a conflict—thus preventing most aircraft from moving close enough to drop short-range munitions. Bombers used in the war game generally employed these munitions because they could be based outside of the range of Chinese missiles.30 The B-21 Raider, which has long-range strike capabilities, will likely be an exception when it becomes operational over the next several years.

In addition, it takes nearly two years to produce LRASMs, creating a time lag to fix the shortfall.31 The FY 2023 budget proposes buying only 88 LRASMs.32 Figure 2 shows the results of one analysis of munitions inventories during a possible future air campaign.33 Much like in CSIS’s war games, it shows how LRASM, JASSM, and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) inventories the U.S. Air Force may produce in the future could be depleted in a war against a major power in roughly one week.34

A future war will also likely be different from past and current wars. For example, the war in Ukraine illustrates the growing use of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) for domain awareness, early warning, targeting for standoff attacks, strike, electronic warfare, and information operations.35 Future wars may include various types of loitering munitions, unmanned underwater vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and other weapons systems that could impact U.S. and allied production and stockpiling.