WTH Happened to American Military Power? Seth Jones on Why the US Can’t Produce the Weapons We Need

The conflict in Ukraine has revealed what conventional war looks
like in this day and age. It has also made clear just how
extensively the US defense industrial base has atrophied in the
post-Cold War era. We are struggling to keep pace with arming
Ukraine, even when drawing from stockpiles that have not been
replenished since Reagan’s buildup in the 1980s. We are failing
to put in place today contracts that will produce critical
munitions by 2026 and beyond, but the reality is that the entire
system is so broken (from the supply chain, to research vs.
procurement imbalances, to budget hurdles) that American
leadership in future great power conflict is a question mark, not
a given. What does this mean looking ahead? Our guest ran over a
half dozen war games to simulate what a US conflict with China
over Taiwan would look like; he discovered that we will run out
of some of our most advanced precision weapons in less than a
week. This should be a wake-up call – why are we seeing sobering
lessons from Ukraine but failing to learn them?


Seth G. Jones is senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair,
director of the International Security Program, and director of
the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS). Prior to joining CSIS, Dr. Jones
was the director of the International Security and Defense Policy
Center at the RAND Corporation. He also served as representative
for the commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, to the
assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Before
that, he was a plans officer and adviser to the commanding
general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan (Combined
Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan).


Download the transcript here.