Trump’s defense reset drags US military tech into the 21st century

This week I’m welcoming President Donald Trump to Pennsylvania for an unprecedented gathering.

For the first time, the US defense industry will recognize that achieving the president’s goal of sustainable peace through strength demands new players and new ways of doing business.  

And at the Defense and Innovation Summit at the US Army War College in Carlisle on Wednesday, Pennsylvania is showing the way.

America’s adversaries, including China, Iran, Russia, North Korea and radical Islamists, share one objective: weakening the United States.

They’re working together to that end.

Iranian-designed Shahed drones, built inside Russia with Chinese components and North Korean labor, are now being used against American interests in Europe and the Middle East.

The face of battle is changing as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and precision weapons produce battlefield effects unimaginable a decade ago — much less 35 years ago, when I deployed to Iraq with the 82nd Airborne in Operation Desert Storm.

The innovation cycle that once took years now moves in weeks.

Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are teaching us one lesson above all: The next war will be won or lost on the strength of our factories and laboratories as much as on the courage of our warfighters.

The challenge we face is of our own creation.

Our defense establishment has grown lethargic, and our definition of national security too narrow.

In the past decade, small businesses in the defense industrial base have fallen by more than 40% — and we became dependent on foreign suppliers, many of them adversaries, for the raw materials our weapons require.

The president and his team have made enormous progress, but meeting this moment requires industry, academia and Congress to step up dramatically.

Congress recently delivered a $150 billion plus-up — the first trillion-dollar defense budget in American history.

Next, we should pass the president’s defense supplemental and his $1.5 trillion budget request.

But spending more only works if we spend on the right things.

The defense industrial base extends far beyond a handful of “primes” — the large companies that directly contract with the Pentagon.

It also spans thousands of small and mid-sized manufacturers the primes rely on, both upstream to the mines and mills behind every weapon, and downstream to depots, repair lines, and shipyards — including Philadelphia’s, where a $5 billion investment is reviving American shipbuilding.

Today the defense base includes new industries that barely existed a decade ago: drones, robotics, autonomous systems and a space sector supporting America’s mission in orbit, as well as the energy and data centers that power it all.

Leave any piece out, and we leave a hole in our defense — a lesson learned during COVID, when America couldn’t make essential goods.

Consider: more than 880 Pennsylvania companies are the sole source of parts critical to our weapons systems. Hundreds supply exactly one.

That means a machine shop in Johnstown is as essential to American security as any boardroom in Arlington, Va. — and that when we say defense base, we must mean all of it.

Second, we need a new defense culture that takes risks, moves fast, learns from failure and embraces dual-use technology — the AI, autonomy and advanced manufacturing coming from the commercial world, not just from defense contractors.

For years the bureaucracy rewarded risk aversion and process over production. That must change.

Finally, our national security demands the right people — a far broader mix than the defense industry has traditionally drawn on.

Winning will take traditional contractors as well as the innovators pushing new technology into the fight, and the builders of energy and AI.

It will take welders, machinists and electricians, and the schools that train them.

And it will take buy-in from federal agencies we don’t typically associate with defense, like Commerce and the Export-Import Bank.

Wednesday’s summit brings the full national security team into one room for the first time: more than 1,300 leaders, including 600 from the C-suite and representatives from more than 500 organizations.

Pennsylvania, a state with the factories, the innovators, the energy and the workforce this effort needs, is the right place to begin.

Today, 190,000 Pennsylvanians work in traditional defense.

Add our miners, steelworkers and energy builders, and the number supporting national security grows by hundreds of thousands.

They supply more than 465,000 parts across nearly 2,300 weapons systems, from Scranton’s artillery shells to Pittsburgh’s robotics labs.

For too long, America lived on the fumes of Ronald Reagan’s military buildup as our factories went quiet and shipyards closed.

President Trump and his administration have charted a new course.

Our task is to bring these players together — and win the peace that only comes through strength.

David McCormick, a West Point graduate and combat veteran, represents Pennsylvania in the US Senate.