Defense Manufacturing That Meets the Moment

For Christmas of 2018, I got my family the classic board game Axis and Allies 1942, which begins at “the historical high-water mark of Axis expansion.” My son Noah was a smart 10-year-old at the time, but I had earned three master’s degrees in strategy. With the Allies’ backs against the wall in the spring of 1942, I took on the Allied role during our first game. Though it took a little while, it was an easy win against Noah.

There was one simple explanation for my loss – the production abilities of the United States became so superior during World War II that the outcome was essentially a foregone conclusion. Even a smart 10-year-old could win against a seasoned strategist with such an advantage.

During the early 1940s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for the United States to become an arsenal of democracy. The nation delivered! American industrial output during the war was staggering. It included “86,000 tanks, 2.5 million trucks and a half million jeeps, 286,000 warplanes, 8,800 naval vessels, 5,600 merchant ships, 434 million tons of steel, 2.6 million machine guns, and 41 billion rounds of ammunition – not to mention the greatest superbomber of the war, the B-29, and the atomic bomb.” It was the output of a marvelous manufacturing juggernaut that had mobilized to meet the moment.

Thus, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has embarked on an Arsenal of Freedom tour, seeking to prompt a renaissance in the defense industrial base by revitalizing America’s manufacturing might and re-energizing the nation’s workforce. His travels have taken him around the country where he powerfully charges workers to meet the moment with the following thought-provoking challenge: “Either you succeed, right here as patriots in this country, or our warriors will not!”

One of Secretary Hegseth’s stops in early January was Divergent Technologies in Los Angeles. Divergent has invented a next-generation digital manufacturing platform where the same factory line makes supercars in the morning and cruise missiles in the evening. It provides an ideal example of Secretary Hegseth’s charge: Without companies like them, “our warfighters won’t have the advantage in the next conflict.”

But how does one company provide such dual-use flexibility and productivity to give our warfighters their much-needed and well-deserved advantage?

The key to Divergent’s platform is a combination of AI-powered design optimization tools, industrial-sized 3D printers, and robotic assembly processes that drive output and preserve flexibility. Except for situations requiring mass production of one product for decades, a single-use factory should be a thing of the past. Instead, an easily reconfigurable process allows for maximum, modular output. Digital manufacturing slashes part count, hacks away at development and production timelines, and minimizes component mass. And through it all, the factory itself has become a weapon with a next-generation competitive advantage to leapfrog our competitors and reclaim manufacturing dominance.

But this type of capability needs to scale, and scale fast.

Capabilities like Divergent’s can’t just exist in a single factory in a single location. They need to scale up, and scale fast. Digital production lines need to be situated alongside weapons hubs, aircraft manufacturing centers, and depot maintenance facilities. They also need to be prepositioned to mitigate supply chain risks in key locations in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the output of such facilities will benefit from constant optimization to meet the commercial and military needs of the location and moment.

They also need to flexibly scale to meet operational constraints. Large manufacturing centers don’t fit on ships. They aren’t suitable for the dozens of agile combat employment locations in the western Pacific that are designed to provide an expansive web of resilience. Agile combat manufacturing, using digital design and manufacturing technologies, can be built with small footprints to meet limited production requirements, either on an aircraft carrier, a forward operating base, or a supply convoy.

Through the engagement of digital manufacturing, the United States can once again become the arsenal of democracy and freedom. In 2026 as in 1942, it is time to wisely mobilize our manufacturing might to prompt our adversaries to understand that the outcome of a conflict would be a foregone conclusion to their detriment. It is the right recipe for deterrence and of strategic advantage that relies on manufacturing that meets the moment.

Brigadier General John Teichert (U.S. Air Force, ret.) is a leading expert on national security. He served as commander of Joint Base Andrews and Edwards Air Force Base, was the U.S. senior defense official to Iraq, and recently retired as the assistant deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs. A prolific author, speaker, and media commentator, John also serves as a Strategic Advisor for Divergent Technologies. General Teichert can be followed at johnteichert.com and on LinkedIn.