Strengthening the Core: a New Partnership between the U.S. Government and Defense Industry was the foundation study of the CSIS Defense-Industrial Initiatives group. This was a two-year project that looked at the current and future relationship between the DoD and the defense industry. Through a three-phase study we framed the issues by undertaking a wide-ranging, collaborative assessment of the health of the defense industry and developing policy ideas for the most critical areas. The first phase, completed in 2004, catalogued the problems confronting the industry, discerning the fundamental from the transitory and arriving at a baseline measurement of its basic health. The second phase developed specific ideas to address those problems, and identified the outlines of a new partnership between government and industry. Overlaying all of this was a major outreach effort to shape a public debate on the health of the defense industry that was balanced, fact-based and arrived at a consensus on the best way to manage this critical element of our national security.
Strengthening the Core laid the basis for some of the policy studies that the Defense-Industrial Initiatives group subsequently tackled.
