A revolution is underway in America’s defense industrial base. It isn’t just about integrating new technologies or making more weapons faster, and smarter, and cheaper, although that lies at the core of any successful manufacturing enterprise. It’s also about rediscovering the lessons learned during World War 2 and combining those proven techniques with the new approaches and technologies of today, to shore up US defense and provide deterrence for the next century.

The United States prevailed during World War 2 through our industrial might and our adaptability to continuously meet and master every new challenge over four years of global conflict. That adaptability gave America the decisive edge on the battlefield. At the time of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy had a grand total of eight aircraft carriers and around 2,200 aircraft. By 1944 the country was building eight aircraft carriers a month and a new warplane every five minutes.

Until now, the key formula for combining innovation with productivity has been fostering competition between key prime contractors to produce the best at the lowest cost. During the Cold War this was a powerful incentive for getting big companies to step up with their “best shot” for a major contract, as when Chrysler and General Motors competed for the M1 battle tank in 1970, and General Dynamics went up against Boeing and Rockwell for the B-1 bomber contract that same year.

With the end of the Cold War, however, the opportunities for competition and the number of possible competitors declined and costs for programs skyrocketed. During WW2, a P-51 Mustang fighter cost an average of $613,000 in 2025 dollars while today a F-35A fighter costs $83,000,000. With numbers like that it’s hard to imagine producing a new F-35 every five minutes but, with the advent of new engineering, production, and design techniques along with increased use of attritable systems, a new set of opportunities are presenting themselves.

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