US Still Dangerous Despite Limits of Military Production

• The US has announced the pause of arms shipments to Ukraine based on acute shortages of specific systems including air defense missiles, anti-tank missiles, and air-to-air missiles used in an air-defense role;

• This is only the most recent development in a long-standing military industrial production crisis facing the United States and its NATO allies;

• Despite publishing a Defense Industrial Strategy identifying “demand signals” as the primary obstruction to increasing production, the US has not shifted production from private for-profit industry to state-owned enterprises which Russia has leveraged to outproduce the US and Europe combined;

• The US is overstretched as a result of pursuing global primacy, attempting to encircle and contain Russia, Iran, China, and many other nations playing a role in the emergence of multipolarism;

• While the US suffers critical obstacles regarding military industrial production, it possesses advantages it can use to compensate including global spanning military infrastructure, a global network engaged in political interference, and still-effective means of sanctioning and threatening global commerce, allowing it to outmaneuver adversaries geopolitically;

• The US is also using a “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing” to compensate for its limited military industrial production, depending on client states to produce and maintain US weapons and munitions, and to concentrate military power on one targeted nation at a time in an attempt to defeat in detail the emerging multipolar world;

References:

US Still Dangerous Despite Limits of Military Production

Politico – Pentagon halting some promised munitions for Ukraine (Jul. 1, 2025):
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07…

Al Jazeera – Saudi Arabia may run out of interceptor missiles in ‘months’ (Jan. 9, 2022):
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1…

Kyiv Independent – Exclusive: Russia’s ballistic missile production up at least 66% over past year, according to Ukrainian intel figures (Jun. 3, 2025):
https://kyivindependent.com/exclusive…

Lockheed Martin – Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 MSE Achieves Record Production Year (Mar. 2025):
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/…

Defense One – Army expects to make more than a million artillery shells next year (Jun. 17, 2025):
https://www.defenseone.com/defense-sy…

US DoD – National Defense Industrial Strategy (2023):
https://www.businessdefense.gov/docs/…

The New Atlas – The Fatal Flaw Undermining America’s Defense Industrial Base (Feb. 2024):

The Fatal Flaw Undermining America’s Defense Industrial Base

US DoD – Opening Remarks by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at Ukraine Defense Contact Group (Feb. 12, 2025):
https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches…

The Marathon Initiative – Strategic Sequencing, Revisited (2024):
https://themarathoninitiative.org/wp-…

RAND Corporation – Extending Russia (2019):
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_re…