Is the Industrial Base on a Wartime Footing? A Progress Report

This episode of All About the Base, a video series analyzing critical industrial base topics, assesses how far the United States has come in placing the industrial base on a wartime footing since the Pentagon first announced this goal in November 2025. Building upon recent analysis from the CSIS Defense and Security Department, Dr. Jerry McGinn presents data capturing key trends across defense spending, munitions production, supply chain security, and international industrial cooperation. These figures illustrate that meaningful progress has been made in several priority areas, including a rising number of new entrants and nontraditional firms in the industrial base, the Pentagon’s push toward a “high-low mix” of munitions that builds both magazine depth and breadth, large-scale investments in a rare earth mine-to-magnet supply chain outside Chinese control, and surging levels of foreign military sales driving closer U.S. and allied security cooperation. Yet industrial plans are not the same as results, and isolated bursts of investment are not the same as institutionalized industrial power. Lengthy munitions production lead times, supply bottlenecks, and gaps between innovation and production remain. Together, these measures demonstrate that a wartime footing is not a destination to be declared but a condition that must be continuously built, tested, and sustained across supplier networks, government and industry, and allies and partners.

The All About the Base series is made possible by general funding to CSIS.