In Homer’s The Iliad, Achilles and Hector epically dueled to settle the Trojan War. Each lunged and parried, clashing together with swords and throwing spears. After several misses, the legendary Hector threw his last spear—striking the shield that Hephaestus, god of the forge, previously gifted Achilles. Recognizing his fate, Hector cried out before Achilles delivered the final blow.

Since the end of the Gulf War, the US military could count on its Hephaestus—the defense industrial base, which encompasses the companies and government organizations that design, produce, and sustain America’s military arsenal. As the United States’ predominant national security focus shifts to counter Chinese aggression, the Department of Defense must confront emerging threats that target the defense industrial base and the US military’s ability to sustain operations in conflict. Beyond strategies, policy, and investment, the US military needs to create a command to develop national contingency plans to mobilize and sustain the materiel required by the joint force and, in the event of conflict, interdict adversary supply chains through partnerships across the government.

Globalization, Complexity, and Adversaries

The need is born from several global trends. Foremost, the US economy relies heavily on imports for products today. Since 1979, domestic manufacturing employment across all sectors fell 34 percent and this trend continued into the twenty-first century. American manufacturing lost an estimated five million jobs since 2000, approximately a quarter of the country’s industrial workforce. The trend comes as many employees are retiring. To meet the increased demands of Stinger missiles in the Ukraine war, RTX’s Raytheon division president described how the company asked “retired employees that are in their 70s . . . to teach our new employees how to actually build a Stinger.” These global economic shifts shaped the defense industrial base’s sourcing decisions. According to a DoD report published in 2021, sixty thousand foreign companies designed, produced, and sustained US military weapons and equipment. This manufacturing exodus left US industry with a much smaller qualified workforce and fewer adequate facilities.

As the national economy globalized, US defense supply chains also grew in complexity. In a report titled “Securing Defense-Critical Supply Chains,” DoD cited work by McKinsey & Company showing how the average American aerospace company relies on two hundred tier-one suppliers—companies that directly provide materials for the manufacture of airplanes—and as many as twelve thousand tier-two (or higher) suppliers. Increasing lead times for weapons system manufacturing also indicate greater supply chain complexity. In June 2024, the Government Accountability Office found the average delivery time for a major defense acquisition program increased from eight to eleven years. The report described how DoD is “not yet well-positioned to field systems with speed”—reflecting the poor readiness of the defense industrial base to equip the joint force as America’s adversaries seek to diminish it.

China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have exploited vulnerabilities made possible by globalization and supply chain complexity. In 2012, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report detailing 1,800 cases of Chinese-manufactured counterfeit electronic parts identified on Air Force aircraft, special operations helicopter assemblies, and a Navy surveillance platform. Alongside supply chain sabotage, China has achieved global market dominance in rare earth elements, ensuring 90 percent of processing capacity exists within China’s borders and nearly guaranteeing US dependence for minerals critical to weapons systems. Moreover, China’s efforts to erode US military readiness in the cyber domain led FBI Director Christopher Wray to describe the state-sponsored intellectual property theft as “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” a strategy that China shows no sign of stopping.

Iran and North Korea have also leveraged cyberspace to target the US defense industrial base. In April 2024, the Department of the Treasury sanctioned individuals associated with the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command based on evidence of spear phishing and malware attacks against US companies and government agencies. Aimed at the US and allied defense industrial base, North Korea’s cyber ranks are specifically target businesses that provide components for nuclear weapons and aviation systems.

Alongside China’s, Iran’s, and North Korea’s employment of these tactics in the gray zone, Russia is targeting European infrastructure and the defense industrial base as part of its ongoing war in Ukraine. In May 2024, a factory that produces air-defense systems on the outskirts of Berlin mysteriously caught fire, an event that Western intelligence officials later described as arson conducted by Russian agents. An analysis published by Chatham House described the incident as part of “a much broader, and more serious Russian campaign of sabotage [that] is spanning the whole of Europe,” citing suspected Russian operations against Swedish railroads as well as GPS jamming in the Baltic Sea region.

These conditions—globalization, supply chain complexity, and adversary interdiction—threaten US national defense and economic security in ways unforeseen thirty years ago. Asymmetric aggression against the US and allied defense industrial base, whether by targeting access to critical minerals or by undercutting industry initiatives, diminish US military readiness. In a world where the United States’ ability to replace weapons systems is in question, adversaries may be more willing to take risk initiating conflict to maximize attrition at the outset. If deterrence fails, the defense industrial base’s dependence on imports, its limited specialized facilities, equipment, and qualified personnel, and the long lead times involved in producing exquisite weapons systems will aggravate industrial mobilization. The risk isn’t solely a matter of cybersecurity or counterintelligence. The competition ranges from national economic policy and intellectual property protections to the availability of a qualified workforce and access to materials and processing facilities—both in the gray zone and in conflict. This situation calls for a functional supply chain approach as America’s adversaries hone the techniques and tactics to undercut the US defense industrial base and deny the military’s access to the weapons it requires.

Overcoming the Tragedy of the Commons in Defense Supply Chains

Facing cyberattacks, supply chain sabotage, and economic strategies that underwrite adversary militaries, how prepared is the US military and the defense industrial base to respond to a potential conflict? Despite strategies, investment, policy, and the crescendo of senior defense officials describing the homeland as “no longer a sanctuary,” fundamental concerns persist as DoD seeks to solve these challenges through a trickle-down approach.

In 2022, the secretary of defense established the Office of Strategic Capital to “attract and scale investment to national security priorities.” Subsequently published in 2023, the National Defense Industrial Strategy identifies critical capabilities with a plan to implement solutions. DoD’s Industrial Base Policy also directs the program offices responsible for acquisition on behalf of the military services through rules and regulations, in addition to what is required by law.

Despite the progress of these initiatives, this approach disaggregates roles, responsibilities, authorities, and accountability. The joint force receives parts and equipment from a diaspora of service-specific sustainment organizations, the Defense Logistics Agency, and seventy-five program executive offices. All these organizations benefit from insights into industrial base capacity, but none have the purview (or incentive) to spend resources addressing whole-of-department threats. While sufficient in a permissive supply chain environment, the existing national security architecture needs reform to sense and respond because industrial capacity is contested.

Organize to Compete and Win

Industrial capacity to replenish the US military arsenal is so foundational to combat capability that it should be considered a weapons system and a command established to wield it. Reflecting supply chains, its purview should be global. The command’s perspective must also extend to the entire joint force, with focus shared between deterring US adversaries through their supply chains and leveraging America’s industrial capacity in conflict. The only way to properly elevate the function is through establishment of a supply chain combatant command.

Even if this command diverts resources from other DoD organizations and takes multiple years to realize, the scope, scale, and persisting relevance of global supply chains require it. This command should be composed of military and civilian logistics, civil engineering, acquisitions, intelligence, operations, and finance professionals from across the military services. Following the US Space Force model, the command should incorporate existing organizations such as the Defense Logistics Agency and reinstitute the Industrial Preparedness Planning Program. Until it was eliminated in a 1991 cost-cutting measure—part of the so-called peace dividend at the end of the Cold War—this DoD program had more than four hundred full-time staff, including armed services production planning officers who assessed the capacity of planned producers. Reestablishing this program with previously assigned resources is a start.

A Command on Offense . . .

Like a company seeking to corner a new market, this command should aggressively seek to deter and engage adversary military forces globally through their military supply chains. Partnering with the intelligence community, other combatant commands, and other departments across the government, this organization would assess adversary vulnerabilities and develop options for achieving global supply chain effects that support US national security interests. Through functional intelligence assessments, target development, and supply chain interdiction campaign plans, this command would provide vital expertise across DoD. Blocking access to critical materials or technology, disrupting the flow of supplies, or influencing adversary decision-making through the readiness of opposing forces can yield tremendous military advantage.

Evidence demonstrates that this approach goes beyond theory. In response to the small, low-cost drones employed by terrorist organizations in the Middle East, the US Army’s Threat Systems Management Office undertook tests to develop counterdrone technology. By purchasing drone components on the open market for its red team, the US Army “unwittingly interdicted militant weapon components,” forcing the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to redesign battlefield drones.

This approach also offers promise in great power competition. Detailed in Underground Empire by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, the United States leveraged authorities across the government to block the global expansion of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei over its ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Meng Wanzhou, the company’s CFO and daughter of the founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Canada on bank fraud charges given her role in selling equipment to Iran in violation of US export controls. Through the investigation, the United States gathered sufficient evidence to impose additional sanctions on Huawei and prevent the company from sourcing from TSMC—the world’s largest chip manufacturer. This example sheds light on how authorities across the Departments of Justice, State, the Treasury, Commerce, and Defense can be applied to achieve US national security interests, but differing interests across these agencies and within DoD prevent such techniques from being employed to achieve military effects at scale.

This command would operate in partnership to achieve these effects across the conflict spectrum.  For example, global supply chain analysis could inform fires by a cruiser assigned to US European Command. This command could also work with US Cyber Command to exploit a vulnerability in an adversary’s military inventory system or US Special Operations Command to sabotage key logistics infrastructure. Whether developing a nonkinetic plan to exploit an adversary’s vulnerability or identifying a supply chain node for a kinetic attack in conflict, the proposed command would work across the interagency to incorporate these techniques to achieve military outcomes.

. . . And Defending America’s Industrial Capacity

This command must also better understand and integrate America’s industrial capacity. Compared to China’s defense industrial base, which is already postured for war and blurs the line between private and public sectors with state-owned enterprises, US law clearly distinguishes between the military and the contractors who support it. The American system has its advantages—including private sector innovation and specialization—but lacks the overarching coordination inherent to a centralized system like the Chinese Communist Party government. Facing a peer competitor that undercuts its suppliers, the US military must establish a command organization to deliver options for industrial base responsiveness.

Building on “directive sourcing” regulations that enable the US government to circumvent regulations regarding competitive bidding to purchase from US and allied suppliers when national security interests are served by doing so, the proposed command should be tasked to develop the civil reserve industrial base—identifying specialized industrial capacity across the country that could be mobilized and controlled by DoD in wartime. Just as US law authorizes the military to leverage transportation from American airline companies through the Civil Reserve Air Fleet or ships through the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement, an equivalent program for the industrial base would sustain necessary discussions about national capacity across the private and public sectors.

With industrial capacity assessments and planning factors provided by the joint force, the command would be positioned to evaluate the level of sustainment risk associated with war plans across all theaters, advise senior defense officials on the state of essential industrial capacity, and develop twenty-first-century options for a Graduated Mobilization Response. The US military must consider how it will respond to attrition and protraction, especially because of weapons system complexity and the limited domestic manufacturing capacity relative to the World War II era. This command must integrate reemerging requirements the US military has not recently been forced to consider, including plans and orders for the rapid integration of the organic industrial base to support other service requirements. For example, a US Air Force unit like the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex should be ready to rapidly deliver requirements for a US Navy destroyer depending on the capabilities required and global priorities.

Lastly, this command should also be tasked to work alongside allied nations to integrate military sustainment activities and respective industrial bases. The DoD 2024 Regional Sustainment Framework envisions “distributed maintenance and repair capabilities closer to the point of need,” but does not address how the department would share supply information or optimize transportation requirements—essential integration in time of war. It is time for a global integrator of industrial capacity, considering requirements from across the services and America’s allies. Offensively and defensively, DoD should wield the defense industrial base and establish a command to lead it.

As the United States seeks to maintain a rules-based international order, the supply chains that equip America’s military forces are essential—both in deterrence and in conflict. How might the epic battle between the two heroes of the Trojan War have ended if Hephaestus had not provided Achilles with his shield? The Homeric legend implies Achilles’s demise. Only after deflecting Hector’s final spear throw with the shield is Achilles able to conquer his enemy.

While Achilles was fortunate to have an immortal blacksmith, the United States military relies on its defense industrial base. Like Achilles, the United States cannot afford for its own Hephaestus and his forge to falter. The world has changed significantly since World War II, but the ability to achieve mass is still a foundational principle of war. While retaining the capability and capacity to field and sustain their forces to achieve national objectives, nations now face a world of weaponized interdependence. However, DoD’s existing structure does not elevate supply chains as a means of competition and warfare. Establishing a combatant command with the authorities to assess, plan, and act through the defense industrial base is a critical function so America’s Hephaestus will answer when its military calls.

Evan Hanson is an active duty major in the United States Air Force. A logistics readiness officer, he is currently assigned as an Air Force legislative fellow and serves as the chief information officer of the Logistics Officer Association.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sean Dath, Naval Air Station Corpus Christi