After years of concerted effort by the Pentagon and Congress to cut through federal red tape and foster closer ties with the commercial sector to speed up military procurement, the defense industry is turning to another problem: how to deliver those orders fast.

Manufacturing is the next bottleneck ahead for defense acquisition amid Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s push to slash the time it takes to get cutting-edge equipment to the field, panelists from across government and industry said at a think tank event in Washington Tuesday. 

Though money to design and build new systems is flowing from the Defense Department and private investors alike, companies still need the right combination of facility space, qualified workers and robust suppliers to deliver hardware and software in months rather than years. Failure to do so risks leaving troops ill-equipped and vulnerable to attack.

“Before the legislation a year ago on acquisition transformation strategy, it didn’t matter whether you were light,” Chris Power, chief executive officer of the AI-powered manufacturing firm Hadrian, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Now it really matters, and it’s up to industry to figure out how to move that production space faster.”

Smaller companies, in particular, have long been at a disadvantage when considering defense opportunities because of difficulties they would face in trying to scale up production for customers as large as the U.S. armed forces. That conundrum has grown more pressing as Defense Department leaders have prioritized outreach to commercial companies, which may move more nimbly than major defense firms but lack the infrastructure to build in large quantities.

Power suggested contractors could team up in ways that play to their strengths, aiming for agility in manufacturing rather than managing the entire process themselves. That can look like Lockheed Martin’s new partnership with General Motors to accelerate weapons production, which Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, said recognizes both GM’s assembly expertise and Lockheed’s intellectual capital from decades of designing for the military.

“Most people are kind of moving to this model of, ‘I want to design the thing, but I don’t necessarily want to worry about scaled manufacturing,’” Power added. “Frankly, the government is putting so much pressure on everybody to scale production, they might not have time to get there.”

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), vice chairman of the Armed Services Committee, noted the answer could lie in spreading out how the military’s most complex equipment is built.

For instance, he said, shipbuilding is only as fast as the surrounding area’s facilities and workforce can manage. Relying on a wider network of repair shops and parts manufacturers to produce components of a ship, then transporting them to the shipyard, could diversify the industrial base and simplify a shipyard’s work. 

“Yards become more of an assembly place than they are a production place,” Wittman said.

And while levers like multiyear procurement deals can signal to industry that it’s time to invest in more factories, defense contractors are depending on incentives like higher pay to fill the shortage of workers skilled in trades like welding to staff them.

“There aren’t enough skilled tradespeople to even be hired,” Power said. “We need millions and millions and millions. … I think everyone’s on board with the mission, but it will take two to four years for this to stick.”

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