In June, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to address growing supply-chain bottlenecks and dwindling stockpiles of precision-guided weapons, missiles, and critical munitions.
The DPA, as a policy tool, has been used alongside several government initiatives to build a more resilient defense industrial base, a goal that has ranked high on the agenda of policymakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties for years. Since the beginning of the new decade alone, Congress has directed billions of dollars toward expanding critical weapons manufacturing, increasing U.S. defense spending by more than 30%.
Nevertheless, a primary challenge in these efforts has been that output growth consistently lags behind funding and acquisition policies. Hadrian, whose software integrates manufacturing execution, machine programming, inspection, scheduling, workforce tasking, and quality documentation into one all-encompassing production system, has changed the paradigm with its Opus system. The precision manufacturer pairs AI-driven automation with dedicated and owned factory capacity rather than layering software onto legacy processes. Other examples include the recently announced partnership between leading aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin and automaker General Motors, aimed at scaling up their joint defense production capabilities.
While such programs may improve efficiency, the deeper issue is that America’s peacetime defense industrial base can no longer meet the demands of sustained wartime operations. The Iran war acutely demonstrated this.
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The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China’s manipulation of global defense supply chains all highlighted the urgency of increasing U.S. defense production nationwide. The creation of the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense and the Office of Strategic Capital, in addition to the publication of the first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy in 2024, marked a new national security initiative being set in motion.
An unusual degree of continuity can be observed between the first Trump administration, the Biden administration, and the second Trump administration’s approach to defense industrial policy in this regard. As the Council on Foreign Relations highlighted, both Presidents Biden and Trump used the DPA to mobilize funding and enlist private manufacturers to accelerate domestic weapons production.
Despite this, defense production output, although gradually increasing, has been constrained by several factors. These include shortages of specialized labor and parts, as well as the time required to expand existing facilities and production lines.
The U.S. defense industrial base represents a highly specialized and relatively low-intensity area of manufacturing built around predictable and recurring cycles of demand. This means that increases in the defense budget cannot bring about a commensurately rapid expansion of manufacturing processes, which require expanded facilities, additional suppliers and new machinery, and the recruitment of new workers.
All of these factors have come together in the production of Tomahawk missiles, manufactured by RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon) in Tucson, Arizona, with the control system provided by Lockheed Martin’s Valley Forge facility in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. government most recently invested in increasing production of Tomahawk cruise missiles in February, aiming for a significant scale-up of yearly output. For Fiscal Year 2027, the U.S. Navy requested a 1,200% increase in procurement for the missile.
Both RTX and Lockheed Martin find it challenging to meet such demands, the availability of funding notwithstanding. In the case of Tomahawk systems, thousands of subcontractors are used to supply specialized materials and parts, many of them based abroad, while lead times for a single missile can take between 18 and 24 months.
Hadrian’s response to this challenge is to build at scale: in March 2026, the company announced Alabama Factory 4 (F4), a 2.2-million-square-foot facility dedicated to the production of U.S. Navy submarine parts. Backed by a $2.4 billion public-private partnership ($1.5 billion in private capital and $900 million in government funding), the investment is a clear sign of Washington’s recognition of the need to embrace new manufacturing models that can deliver the kind of volumes that legacy contractors struggle to hit. The facility joins Hadrian’s existing operations in California and Arizona, making it among the largest dedicated defense manufacturing footprints built by a new entrant.
Several new manufacturing companies are already working to address these bottlenecks, altogether changing the model of defense production. Software-driven and technology-enhanced manufacturing concepts and automated production are combined with robotics by Hadrian to manufacture critical parts for aerospace, naval, and defense programs. Mach Industries is developing flexible manufacturing facilities to support the U.S. military, while Relativity Space and Anduril Industries both seek to replace traditional supply chains with vertically integrated platforms.
Employing such innovative systems provides advantages on two fronts. It alleviates demand for weapons systems by reducing lead times, and it increases U.S. ownership of critical manufacturing processes at the same time. Hadrian, for example, has significantly reduced manufacturing times while also emphasizing faster worker training.
With increasing attention devoted to the defense industrial complex in Washington, the real question becomes not whether the U.S. should invest more in its indigenous industrial production capacity, but whether supporting innovative manufacturing systems built on a new model would be more beneficial than simply expanding existing production lines.
Of course, existing defense suppliers will continue to serve as prominent producers. The challenge for Washington, as well as the private sector, is to combine legacy defense contractors’ experience with the emerging technologies of new producers in an advantageous way and in a format in which they can reinforce one another. This may prove to be a viable route for converting public investment into commensurate private production capacity.
