Like many in attendance at last month’s Reagan National Defense Forum (RNDF), I was encouraged by Secretary Pete Hegseth’s pledge that the Department of War (DOW) will be pursuing a line of effort to supercharge America’s declining defense industrial base. As Hegseth correctly noted, the industrial base is foundational to address the many national security challenges facing the US — particularly those coming from Beijing.
China is outproducing the US on a massive scale. China acquires weapons five to six times faster than US, is the world’s largest shipbuilder and has a capacity that’s 232 times greater than ours, and is projected to have 45 percent of global manufacturing share by 2030. It’s also important to recognize that China has effectively integrated its civilian sector for wartime ramp-up.
Meanwhile, our ability to mass produce weapons systems has calcified as we shrunk our defense industrial base post-Cold War. Defense budgets were cut, contractors were consolidated, and our military spent 20 years in two Middle East conflicts in which defense spending was focused on operations, not forward-looking investments. And across our economy, we outsourced our ability to manufacture at scale to China. That’s especially consequential when it comes to magnets and rare earth minerals — including critical value chain activities of separation, processing, and refining.
Restarting a robust defense industrial base with the capacity to surge manufacturing for critical supplies will take time. Thankfully, the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) has begun taking on this challenge through public-private partnership agreements with MP Materials and Vulcan Elements for rare earth materials and magnets. The agreements are just a preview of what’s to come, as OSC was recently provided up to $200 billion in total lending authority in the Working Families Tax Cut, specifically for critical minerals production and related industries, and the capital assistance program.
While many have resisted the idea of the US government taking equity in strategic companies, the truth is that without it, we cannot compete on even footing with the Chinese Communist Party, which fuses it’s civilian-government enterprise for a whole-of-country line of effort to be the global hegemon, including under-cutting global markets and currency manipulation.
While the DOW pursues an aggressive Acquisition Transformation Strategy, Congress has put forth — both in the upcoming fiscal year 2026 Defense Appropriations bill and FY26 National Defense Authorization Act — an idea to maximize American manufacturing capacity in the US.
How the “Doomsday Plane” contract highlights the rise of mid-tier primes
Midsized companies can offer flexibility and agility while keeping intellectual property in the hands of the government.
Our new initiative creates a Civil Reserve Manufacturing Network (CRMN) to establish a certification and qualification process for domestic commercial companies to manufacture components, weapons, and equipment. It would remove red tape, build a national registry of manufacturing capabilities, and fund select factory equipment to adapt their existing lines for rapid defense production.
With the NDAA passed into law, the DOW has the statutory authority to move on this vital effort as congressional appropriators finish their work to provide the initial funding. The Pentagon should direct the Industrial Base Policy Assistant Secretary of War to oversee the creation of CRMN and to facilitate processes and resources to immediately improve logjams on certification and qualification processes.
For too long the US has neglected the third, fourth, and lower-tiered suppliers that produce critical components to ensure our military and technological superiority. With that absence of forethought, our defense industrial base has faltered under outsourcing and consolidation. With a crisis at hand, it’s clear we need solutions, like CRMN, that will demonstrate to the world that the US can grow and scale the systems needed to deter our enemies.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan spoke to the nation about the inherit danger of inaction in the face of growing threats. He said, “It’s up to us, in our time, to choose and choose wisely between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.” For President Donald Trump to cement his place as “the true and rightful heir of President Reagan,” as Hegseth proclaimed at the RNDF, the DOW must continue to make investments and sustain its efforts to boost domestic defense industrial manufacturing.
By creating CRMN, Congress is handing the Trump administration a valuable tool to link and maximize commercial and defense manufacturing in America.
Congressman Ken Calvert serves as the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives and represents California’s 41st District.