Strengthening Surge Capacity: Findings from a Table-Top Exercise Focused on Protracted Conflict | All About the Base

This episode of All About the Base, a video series analyzing critical industrial base topics, assesses the industrial capacity America and its allies need to succeed in a prolonged conflict scenario in the Indo-Pacific theater. The war in Ukraine and the campaign against Iran have laid bare a stark reality: the United States severely struggles to surge production to meet its national security needs. Several war games spelling out potential Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait – and an American-led military response – have also revealed significant constraints on U.S. manufacturing. In the most optimistic outcome of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a CSIS war game estimated that America and its allies would lose 290 combat aircraft and 24 ships after 4 weeks of hostilities. How does the United States quickly rebuild these platforms and break the cycle of vulnerability?  

Host Dr. Jerry McGinn, Director of the Center for the Industrial Base, discusses these issues with Professor Mark Cancian, Senior Adviser with the Defense and Security Department at CSIS and the lead for a recent manufacturing security table-top exercise (TTX) detailing an American and allied response to protracted Chinese aggression against Taiwan. Building from the findings of the TTX, they examine policy options for surging defense production, opportunities for closer industrial coordination between government and industry, and pathways for allied co-production and co-sustainment in the Indo-Pacific. Taken together, their analysis demonstrates how mapping and addressing industrial vulnerabilities at home in advance of conflict is essential to provide for the defense of U.S. national interests and allies abroad.