Over the past few weeks, the Trump administration drew criticism from the mainstream news over whether it had “halted” Biden-approved weapons shipments to Ukraine.
Comments from anonymous sources suggested the DoD is concerned about our weapon arsenal. DoD spokesman Sean Parnell clarified that shipments to Ukraine as well as other nations were only paused during an internal capability review. Within a few days, the shipments were back on. But the administration missed a golden opportunity. The review could have been a justification to stop sending weapons to other countries altogether – until our own arsenal is ship shape, or until further notice.
Nothing can replace readiness, because readiness takes time. All of the systems desired in Ukraine and elsewhere take months and sometimes years to build, and we’re the only country that builds them. So even though other countries are paying, they’re paying to utilize our resources and delay the development of our own destiny. We can’t let peace cost us strength.
There’s no advantage to inventing technologies and designing weapon systems around them if you’re functionally limited in how many you can use because you’re too busy giving them away to the rest of the world. Take the Patriot missile system, Ukraine’s most urgent request, for example.
When the Patriot operators in Qatar shot down missile after incoming missile from Iran’s retaliatory action last month, it made a great light show. But those interceptors are history now. We took out Iran’s nuclear ambitions and secured the high price of that mission with even more weapons spent against Iran’s pointless, but still dangerous, response. So there’s a prudent case to be made for shoring up our own equipment, now that we’ve saved much of the world a huge headache.
Have all the other options been exhausted? Did every (or any) NATO country loan or sell its Patriot systems to Ukraine already, as Ukraine requested last year? Based on Ukraine’s recently renewed requests, one can conclude no. Regardless of whether it’s a good idea to intervene in other countries’ affairs, asking us to tie up our manufacturing for export is the same as asking NATO countries to disarm themselves.
It’s not just about what’s being requested, whether we feel like we have enough to spare, or if it’s OK because someone else is paying. Such utilitarian thinking sounds like a Peace dividend mindset. Now is a time to be greedy, to radically re-build and even re-fashion what our defensive posture will be. We’re done with the Middle East – the June 21 Iran strike purchased this for us, if we have the discipline to stand by it. And we do. It’s time to turn the corner and look to the future.
Imagine if all of our defense manufacturing capacity were re-directed to focus on what we feel we need to stay ahead of real threats. Open the aperture. Drones, ships, chips, domestic cloud computing companies with zero Chinese nationals maintaining it, power transformers without remote access backdoors, refueling satellites that would take us from behind to dominant in the new space race. Open the aperture further yet and consider securing our own pharmaceutical base and China-free defense-built laptops.
If national defense now looks like soldiers guarding our border and covering ICE, then defense manufacturing should reflect a priority on China deterrence and critical infrastructure re-shoring. After years of infiltration and deferred maintenance, defense must be re-configured around domestic concerns.
We are at the dawn of a new age, geopolitically and philosophically. Whatever happened earlier this month, it is justifiably time to start taking care of America first.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Vanessa Battaglia is a defense engineer with 14 years’ experience designing software, hardware, and airborne systems for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Special Operations Command, and the Federal Aviation Administration.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Image by David B. Gleason/Flickr)
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