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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Politics
Published on
Jun 15, 2026
Contributors
Arthur Herman
USAF Thunderbirds Fly-by. Unsplash.

America Can’t Build for War Anymore

Contributors
Arthur Herman
Arthur Herman
Senior Research Fellow
Arthur Herman
Summary
Wars in Ukraine and Iran have exposed a dangerous reality: Decades of bureaucratic paralysis have left America unable to replenish its arsenal quickly enough to maintain its military edge.
Summary
Wars in Ukraine and Iran have exposed a dangerous reality: Decades of bureaucratic paralysis have left America unable to replenish its arsenal quickly enough to maintain its military edge.
Listen to this article

There is something seriously wrong with how the United States equips and arms our military.

Americans should have realized this on August 29, 2022, when The Wall Street Journal reported that supplying Ukraine with 155-millimeter artillery shells was depleting U.S. stocks of the munition to “uncomfortably low” levels.

Then it turned out something similar was happening with other weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Sending 10,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine has cleared out roughly one-third of the total U.S. Javelin inventory, and will require multiple years of production to replace. It was the same story all down the munitions line—from guided multiple launch rocket systems and Hellfire missiles to ammunition plants in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Kingsport, Tennessee, which needed $678 million to ramp up production after supplying Ukraine emptied the cupboard.

Suddenly, there was no way for the American public to ignore what experts, Congress, and the Pentagon had known for nearly a decade: Our nation’s defense industrial base was in serious turmoil. And in the years since, though the current administration has made efforts to revive our standing, we still have a long way to go.

Read the full article on The Free Press.

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