"From Production Lines to Front Lines," with Becca Wasser and Philip Sheers of CNAS

In this episode of Building the Base, Hondo Geurts and Lauren Bedula are joined by Becca Wasser and Philip Sheers from the Center for New American Security (CNAS) to discuss their recent report, "From Production Lines to Front Lines." Drawing from extensive industry research and stakeholder interviews, Wasser and Sheers offer a comprehensive look at the critical challenges and opportunities facing America's defense industrial base in an era of great power competition.

Five key takeaways from today's episode:

1. Workforce remains the greatest limitation to manufacturing growth, with Wasser emphasizing "it's the workforce, stupid" as a core barrier that requires creative solutions like expanding AmeriCorps to include defense industrial base career paths.
2. The defense industrial base has experienced decades of consolidation and lacks responsiveness to changing battlefield needs, demonstrated by challenges in ramping up production for Ukraine despite Herculean efforts from senior leaders.
3. Structural vulnerabilities include outsourced supply chains to adversary-controlled regions and over-reliance on single-source sub-tier suppliers, creating critical bottlenecks that threaten both capacity and responsiveness in future conflicts.
4. Small but actionable policy changes could yield significant improvements, such as allowing multi-year procurement of critical components like solid rocket motors without requiring an end item, providing immediate flexibility for production scaling.
5. International partnerships with allies are essential for both learning from advanced manufacturing capabilities and creating resilient co-production arrangements, with countries like Japan and South Korea offering critical shipbuilding expertise that could augment America's defense industrial capacity.