Posted on 11/26/2025 9:23:52 PM PST by SeekAndFind
For nearly a century, America’s military strength has come largely through self-reliance. We not only made the ships, airplanes and tanks, our country supplied the parts and materials for these complex systems. But a lot has changed in recent times.
Unfortunately, our military has increasingly relied on sourcing parts globally -- including from possibly unreliable places like China. It’s a disastrous side effect of globalization.
For example, while modern jet engines may typically include between 30,000 and 50,000 parts, ensuring they are “China-free” has proven to be incredibly difficult. We’ve already seen deliveries of F-35s delayed over this issue, revealing that supply chain risk and delays remain in the post-COVID era. For instance, in 2022, a magnet in the turbomachine used in engine start-up was discovered to contain a China-produced alloy of cobalt and samarium – figuratively becoming a “non-starter” for using the jets.
Moreover, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report this past July entitled, “Defense Industrial Base: Actions Needed to Address Risks Posed by Dependence on Foreign Suppliers” which pretty much summed it up.
While America has inadvertently offered an Achilles Heel to potential foes, the Chinese are using the global wealth transfer to invest in its defense manufacturing base. Largely relying on intellectual property theft, also known as stealing, China is focusing on stealth design, advanced jet engines, and artificial intelligence, thereby altering the playing field.
As China has risen, America’s manufacturing sector has steadily declined, losing millions of jobs and share of global output.
China has allocated vast resources towards subsidizing and onshoring manufacturing and development of “indigenous” advanced propulsion systems, and are catching up to our military engines – challenging air superiority.
This is why appropriate investment by Congress in the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) systems is essential to maintaining America’s technological and military lead.
While the U.S. Air Force has made significant investments in funding for NGAP development, it comes after stagnation in military propulsion.
In President Trump’s FY26 Budget proposal, NGAP was funded at roughly $330 million, representing a 23% decrease in funding from the previous year. Underfunding engine development puts the program at risk of significant schedule delays and cost increases. These facts lay the groundwork for a serious debate in both chambers of Congress as they look to fund our current and future military needs.
While U.S. companies are working on a prototype that will improve performance, increase range, and fuel efficiency of fighter jets, it can only grow at the pace of investment.
NGAP is designed to power the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform, America’s first sixth generation fighter, (now designated as the F-47). Its combination of stealth, speed and maneuverability would probably seem like science fiction to military pilots a century ago. NGAD is designed to work with unmanned Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) for air dominance. Unmanned CCA’s, perhaps the world’s most advanced drones, will fly alongside manned NGAD as a so-called “loyal wingman” and can be configured for a wide variety of missions.
While the F-47 is not expected to enter service until the 2030s, unfortunately for America, China has already introduced not one, but two flying sixth generation fighters on the same day last year. Little is known about the capabilities of the two models, but the fact that China has developed and flown two advanced fighter designs before the F-47 even put a rivet to metal should be incredibly concerning for all Americans.
For the U.S. to counter this challenge, a robust, resilient domestic manufacturing base in high-tech industries is essential. This requires not only investing in advanced manufacturing facilities but also revitalizing workforce training programs, increasing R&D funding, and fostering innovation ecosystems in key technological areas.
Though China is among our top trading partners, it’s also paradoxically among our top threats. It strongly supports North Korea, an existential threat to our allies South Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, we generously support Taiwan, which it sees as a renegade province worthy of invasion at any time. Our heavy reliance on China trade, combined with adversarial alliances is not only unwise, but also a recipe for catastrophe. Therefore, we must divorce China from our military manufacturing and supply system entirely. Either that or simply abandon our Pacific allies and do a “180” in foreign policy – a major defeat of American power.
We can and should bring more domestic manufacturing back to the U.S. through smarter policies and programs. We must strengthen investment to ensure potential adversaries do not gain a military and technological edge. Congress and President Trump ought to insist upon it.
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
My CNC mill and lathe are sitting idle while I search for items to manufacture.
If US manufacturing were nearly as robust as it should be I would be adding more machines.
Good luck getting US contracts. I am about the same. US contracts go for about a real $15 an hour. I got a job offer at Bath Iron works for an engineering job. The pay was laughable. The DEI requirements still stand and NOtHING will get a contract unless you have a dozen useless fat angry black women on staff.
Domestic military spending is really just a fancy jobs program, just as it’s been since WWII.
TREASON by USG and MIC..
I thinkw hat is undoing us more is the belief a nation like ours can remain intact and cohesive with immigrants coming in and not integrating into America, instead staying balkanized. Lack of common ground and things that bind us together. Thats unraveling us faster than anything else right now, especially since our internal socialists and liberals weaponize demographic groups against each other for their own nation-destroying goals.
Too true, almost makes me glad to be 70 YOA and not a kid facing this future.
Of course the kids have no clue and are not doing anything to rectify the situation.
Surely, the paces of development of the US MIC will also greatly depend on the measures taken by our government to stop brain drain in this sphere. As China is now far ahead of us, the issue is really overriding.
But the fact that now we get money from Europe within the PURL program to produce and deliver our military weapons and equipment to Ukraine is likey to help us ramp up our capacities and spend more on devising new samples with increased capabilities.
“Of course the kids have no clue and are not doing anything to rectify the situation.”
The kids you speak of grew up in a public education system that fails miserably in teaching fundamental skills - reading, writing, math, and civics. Instead they were brainwashed with socialism and hatred for their country’s history and government. Their minds were formed in a system without standards. Everyone gets a trophy no matter how mediocre their performance.
Barely functional illiterates cannot build and staff 21 st century supply chains, even if the politicians have the foresight and will to make the policy changes necessary to incentivize private capital to fund the trillions of dollars of investment required to rebuild American manufacturing.
A 40 year old ethnic studies graduate whose entire career has been spent working for government funded social justice organizations has no skills to supervise an assembly line, much less work on one. The millions of illiterate third and fourth generation products of the social welfare system have zero work ethic, no skills, and no desire to put in eight hours of demanding work in a production environment.
In 1990 the U.S. had the greatest industrial economy on the planet. The supply chains were deliberately dismantled and outsourced. The people with the knowledge and skills to operate complex supply chains are retired and dying off.
The poorly educated kids, now adults, have no clue and their children will live in a third world subsistence economy when the dollar and banking system collapses. With that economic collapse will come a brutal socialist dictatorship.
Here's how concerned many Americans were 20 years ago.
Does Wal Mart Mislead On What It Imports From China?
Post 2, "And the reason that I should lay awake nights worrying about what Wal-Mart imports is???"
Post 5, "Maybe. Why do I care? Is it illegal? Immoral? Unconstitutional? Would I get a better deal otherwise?"
Post 9, "yeah whatever....just go ahead and bash WalMart. This is how the world works and I kind of like the low prices myself...."
Post 30, "but the pseudo communists always come out of the woodwork in a WalMart thread...." (you have to follow the thread to get this one).
Post 33, this person turned out to be a prophet, "It is gonna be interesting when we need to make tanks to fight the Chinese? We have exported our manufacturing base."
Post 56, "Why is this even important? Why should we care what % of their inventory they import whether it be from China or any other country?"
Post 79, "Translation: I won't answer this because my answer would call for protectionism and this would lead to another debacle along the lines of that which occurred when Smoot-Hawley was enacted to "fix" the economy in the 1930's."
Post 94, in reply to post 79 above, "That sums up the mindset of the Wal-Mart bashing brigade here."
Post 287, "This applies to the anti-free traders also. USA - we've got ours, screw you. No you can't have access to our markets, we want to keep you poor."
Post 301, "So far I have been accused of being a communist chinese plant to influence Free Republic for taking the free trade position. (So far) Now Free Trade advocates are being lumped with the Islamofacists? I'm building quite the resume!"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.