February 16, 2023
U.S. Needs Attritable Systems, Strategic Logistics Analysis to Win Wars
Wars are won and lost well before they even start. The key to victory, if the U.S. is forced to engage in a near-peer fight, will rely on the adoption of attritable weapon systems: simplistic in design, rapidly reproducible and highly lethal. It will also depend on a sharper focus on strategic logistics planning and analysis across the defense-industrial base.
The idea of securing every inch of a complex weapon system’s supply chain—while an imperative—is perhaps a near-impossible task.
Policymakers have taken aggressive steps to shore up the defense-industrial base by harnessing lessons learned and investing in new safeguards and approaches to increase resilience. However, a fair assertion is that these efforts alone are not enough to meet the demands of a near-peer fight.
Read the full article from Defense News.
More from CNAS
-
Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast [Jun 26, 25] Season 3 E25: Focus Forward
Just when people were saying the future of air power was small, distributed systems like UAVs, the US struck Iran’s nuclear program infrastructure with an old-fashioned manned...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
Defense / Energy, Economics & Security
Tariffs & and the Defense Industrial Base with Becca Wasser, plus what’s new in the U.S.-China trade warGeoff and Emily debrief on the latest news in the U.S.-China trade talks. Becca Wasser, senior fellow and deputy director of the CNAS defense program, joins to talk about what...
By Emily Kilcrease, Geoffrey Gertz & Becca Wasser
-
Production Power: The Revitalisation of the U.S. Defence Industrial Base and the Consequences for Europe
In episode 15 of Strategy Speaks, Becca Wasser from CNAS speaks with Daniel Fiott about the US defence industrial base and how its revitalisation could affect Europe. The conv...
By Becca Wasser
-
MWI Podcast: The U.S. Defense Industrial Base, from Steel to Software
Mobilizing the U.S. defense industrial base. for a future large-scale conflict, however, will look very different than it has in the past. In the information age, data and sof...
By Becca Wasser