WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy makes defense production capacity a central pillar of deterrence—calling for urgent steps to “supercharge” the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) and describing the effort as requiring “nothing short of a national mobilization.”
Under its fourth line of effort—“Supercharge the U.S. Defense Industrial Base”—the strategy argues that the DIB is the foundation for rebuilding and adapting the force, sustaining readiness, and enabling partners to take on a larger share of collective defense.
The document links industrial capacity directly to combat credibility: it says U.S. “readiness, lethality, range, and survivability” depend on the ability to develop, field, sustain, and resupply munitions and platforms—thereby shaping the “military options” available to the president.
To scale production, the strategy calls for reinvestment in U.S. defense manufacturing, “building out capacity,” expanding nontraditional vendors, and partnering with traditional industry, Congress, and allies. It also explicitly embraces technology adoption—naming artificial intelligence—and pledges to clear “outdated policies, practices, regulations, and other obstacles” that it argues limit speed and scale.
A notable feature of the industrial plan is its tie to alliance policy. The strategy says the U.S. should be able to produce not only for itself but also for allies “at scale, rapidly, and at the highest levels of quality,” while also leveraging allied production to incentivize higher partner defense spending and faster force generation.
That industrial push is presented as the practical engine behind the strategy’s broader burden-sharing agenda. In the allied section, the NDS says the U.S. will prioritize cooperation with “model allies” through tools including arms sales, intelligence-sharing, and defense industrial collaboration—while encouraging Europe to focus resources on Europe and expanding transatlantic defense industrial cooperation and trade.
The strategy frames the DIB drive in historic terms, arguing that powering deterrence in the current era will require an industrial revival comparable to past mobilizations that helped the U.S. prevail in the world wars and the Cold War.
Separately, analysts and lawmakers have been debating related Homeland-defense priorities referenced in the NDS—especially Golden Dome—with recent reporting highlighting pressure on the administration to produce clearer implementation details.
