Defense-Critical Energy Infra.
Energy Infrastructure and the Defense Industrial Base
Joseph Majkut, et al. | 2026.03.17
Can the energy infrastructure serving the U.S. defense industrial base sustain production under mobilization?
Introduction
Energy shortages constrained wartime production during World War I, with power shortfalls resulting in chemical, steel, and metallurgy plants across the Northeast producing below capacity. The U.S. government learned from this experience: Before World War II, it surveyed national power capacity, controlled power plant siting to align supply with wartime demand, mandated interconnected “power pools,” and combined industry and military engineering prowess to improvise solutions at on-site facilities. These interventions prevented energy shortages from stalling wartime production during the war despite a 68 percent increase in electricity demand between 1939 and 1945.
The fact that government intervention was needed to prevent energy shortfalls from affecting defense production during World War II suggests that the United States should be attentive to how it provides energy to strategic industries. The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) prioritizes both the U.S. defense industrial base and U.S. “energy dominance” but does not clearly link the two, as history suggests it should. This paper represents a first effort to demonstrate how energy supply and defense production are linked in practice and where the United States faces the greatest risks.
Defining Mobilization
To assess the energy implications of a military buildup, the team generated three scenarios for defense production. The baseline scenario assumes small increases over current rates of production; the buildup scenario assumes increases in production that permit U.S. services to meet their stated force structure goals or, if no stated goals were available, what policy analysts believe would represent ambitious but achievable goals. The war rate scenario assumes a total mobilization of U.S. society to fight a protracted war in the Indo-Pacific over a period of roughly five years. This final scenario was based on a combination of publicly reported estimates of loss rates from wargames and extrapolation from U.S. production mobilization during World War II.
▲ Table 1: Select Annual Defense Production Levels by Scenario
Notably, each production category is made up of various individual weapons systems. For example, “munitions” comprises the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile. The full breakdown of each category is available in this paper’s methodological annex.
The buildup and war rate scenarios assume that the United States can alleviate other structural obstacles to increased military production. Several experts interviewed for this project argued that budgetary pressures, for example, were likely to constrain the military’s ability to increase production well before any sort of energy limitation came into play. Multiple analysts have persuasively argued that a U.S. mobilization for war with China will come nowhere near that of the U.S. mobilization for World War II. The team decided to use the World War II analogy despite this argument because the mobilization level before World War II represents the most demanding scenario for the U.S. energy supply.
The research team drew on information from expert interviews, public statements by U.S. government personnel and defense industry members, government documents, and think tank reports to construct each scenario. CSIS also conducted two workshops under the Chatham House Rule to pressure-test and validate the scenarios.
A complete description of scenarios and methods is included in the annex.
Defense Production Energy Needs
The research team took an embodied energy approach to establish energy demand estimates across scenarios. This method breaks down major weapons systems into their primary material constituents, estimates the embodied energy of each system using published values for energy intensity by material, and maps that demand to production facilities (fabs) where those materials are manufactured in the United States as of 2025.
Embodied energy, measured in megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg), represents the cumulative energy input required to produce a material from raw resource extraction through final manufacturing, including energy from gas, coal, electricity, and other sources.
Key material categories analyzed include:
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Metals: Steel (25.3 MJ/kg), aluminum (155 MJ/kg), and titanium (361 MJ/kg)
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Composites: Carbon fiber (286 MJ/kg), graphite epoxy (203 MJ/kg), and fiberglass epoxy (44.7 MJ/kg)
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Electronics: Printed circuit board (PCB)–intensive components (748.8 MJ/kg)
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Energetics: Explosives and solid rocket propellants
To translate these material-level energy intensities into system-level estimates, the team broke down each weapons system into its primary material constituents by weight, drawing on publicly available technical specifications, manufacturer disclosures, and expert interviews. For example, an F-35A stealth fighter jet was broken down into its approximate masses of titanium, aluminum, carbon fiber composite, and electronics components, each of which carries a distinct embodied energy value. Multiplying the mass of each material by its energy intensity yields an embodied energy estimate per unit. Multiplying that energy estimate by the production volumes defined in each scenario yields total energy demand by system, material, and scenario. This approach allows the identification not only of how much energy mobilization is required in aggregate, but also which materials drive that demand and, consequently, which production facilities and regional grids face the greatest pressure.
The study assumes that these methods are biased downward because calculations rely on open-source data using civilian, rather than military-grade, values for embodied energy. Moreover, the scenarios encompass only a subset of the weapons systems necessary for military mobilization and, furthermore, exclude assembly and production energy needs. However, by focusing on key primary inputs and their embodied energy, the study team believes that it is possible to capture the bulk of energy demand and to identify regional risks for production scale-up without needing to trace defense supply chains through nearly 200,000 suppliers. (For a more detailed discussion of the methodology, system decomposition, and production-rate assumptions, including the methodological limitations, see the annex.)
Mobilization Energy Demand
The war rate scenario represents 17.4 PJ of annual manufacturing energy demand. Increased munitions and unmanned systems production account for approximately 60 percent of this demand, while combat aircraft and naval vessels account for 15 and 24 percent, respectively. For context, 17.4 PJ is relatively small when compared to state- and national-level energy use—for example, as of 2023, Maine’s annual energy consumption was 350 PJ, Mississippi’s was 1,100 PJ, and total U.S. energy use was 99,000 PJ, nearly 5,700 times larger.
▲ FIGURE 1A: Estimated Annual Embodied Energy by Defense System
▲ FIGURE 1B: Estimated Annual Embodied Energy vs. Total U.S. Energy Use
At the national level, defense industrial base (DIB) energy demand is unlikely to be a binding constraint regardless of mobilization scenario—the United States, in the aggregate, has enough energy. However, differences across mobilization scenarios are substantial. Respectively, the buildup and war rate scenarios require 1.8 and 5 times more energy than estimated baseline production levels. While negligible nationally, the buildup and war rate scenario increases center on specific materials, enabling identification of both which materials drive consumption and which production facilities, and their associated regional grids, might face the greatest pressure under mobilization.
▲ FIGURE 2: Embodied Energy by Material Across Mobilization Scenarios
Figure 2 disaggregates war rate energy demand by material. Together, electronics (3,572 TJ), aluminum (7,068 TJ), and steel (3,428 TJ) account for 81 percent of total embodied energy, with titanium (1,968 TJ) and carbon fiber (309 TJ) comprising most of the remainder. Steel and aluminum demands reflect the mass (tonnage) requirements of naval vessels and armored systems. Titanium, despite its lower required tonnage, drives increases because of its relatively higher embodied energy. Electronics demand spans all platform categories, from guidance systems in munitions to avionics in combat aircraft, accounting for its large increases.
The scaling dynamics across mobilization scenarios differ markedly by material. Figure 2 illustrates how aluminum demand increased tenfold between the baseline mobilization scenario and war rate levels, roughly fourfold for electronics and titanium, and threefold for steel. This divergence is driven by which systems scale most aggressively under mobilization: Production demands related to expendable munitions and autonomous platforms increase much faster than those for large, crewed vessels.
A handful of systems are responsible for the jump in demand from the buildup to war rate scenarios. Foremost among those are unmanned surface vehicles known as modular autonomous surface craft (MASC), which account for nearly half of the combined electronics and aluminum increase, reflecting a shift toward distributed, attritable naval assets. Precision-guided munitions—represented in the quantitative analysis by the JASSM and GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb—drive much of the electronics surge because the war rate scenario assumes extremely high rates of production to meet the anticipated enormous demand for standoff weapons.
These increases reflect the U.S. military’s shift toward affordable mass and away from more traditional, long-lasting, but expensive and limited-number systems. That is, the U.S. military is increasingly focused on securing expendable, autonomous platforms produced in large numbers. Unlike traditional systems that would require new production lines and years of ramp up to increase numbers, production of these more affordable mass systems could surge more quickly, concentrating energy demand on electronics and aluminum production, potentially more quickly than energy infrastructure can keep up. The semi- or fully autonomous nature of these affordable mass systems means that all are characterized by a high density of electronics.
Regional Vulnerabilities
This section examines whether the energy infrastructure serving the defense industrial base can deliver. Identifying potential energy bottlenecks requires mapping material-specific demands onto regions housing the primary production facilities for aluminum, steel, titanium, and electronics manufacturing and then evaluating the energy constraints facing those regions.
The analysis focuses on two primary production constraints: electricity grid reliability and natural gas deliverability. Both matter—a grid outage can halt production regardless of gas supply, and a gas shortage can idle facilities even when the grid is stable. But during winter stress events, the two constraints interact: Pipeline bottlenecks limit fuel availability for gas-fired generation, weakening the grid precisely when electricity demand peaks.
The sources for the location of critical industrial facilities are listed in the annex.
▲ FIGURE 3: Distribution of Critical Industrial Facilities by Sector. Symbol size represents facility capacity.
▲ FIGURE 4: Winter Gas Price Volatility by Sector. Note: Color represents county-level power system vulnerability (PSVI).
Figures 3 and 4 showcase two key dimensions of risk: grid reliability and gas deliverability. State backgrounds are shaded by winter gas price volatility, a proxy for gas deliverability constraints during peak demand periods. Facility points are colored by the Power System Vulnerability Index (PSVI), a county-level measure of grid reliability risk. The PSVI is a composite index measuring the frequency, duration, and intensity of county-level power system outages, while facility size reflects production capacity. As both figures demonstrate, critical industrial capacities cluster within regions facing elevated risk on one or both of the identified dimensions. The PJM Interconnection (PJM) is a regional transmission organization that manages the electrical grid for 13 states in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest. This region hosts the majority of U.S. titanium and aluminum production and, as Figures 3 and 4 illustrate, exhibits high PSVI scores but moderate gas volatility. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the vast majority of Texas’ electrical grid, hosting nearly a third of U.S. semiconductor fabrication capacity, displays both high PSVI and high gas volatility.
The sections that follow examine each constraint in detail before assessing how they compound in tandem, and what the implications of this compounding could be for defense-critical industries.
Electricity Grid Vulnerabilities and Critical Industry Concentration
The materials most critical to defense industrial applications are also those that face the greatest exposure to grid reliability risk. Of approximately 110 million tons of U.S. steel capacity, for example, 58 percent is located in counties with medium-to-high PSVI scores in 2023. Titanium production shows the most acute concentration: 73 percent of domestic capacity sits in counties with PSVI scores above 75, with the facilities clustered primarily within the PJM Interconnection. Semiconductor fabrication capacity, driven largely by Texas facilities, has roughly 60 percent exposure to high-risk grid regions. The four primary aluminum smelters in the United States all operate in medium-risk regions (Figure 3). This distribution of defense-critical industrial facilities means that the sectors with long reconstitution timelines and the most specialized production processes (i.e., titanium sponge, advanced logic chips, and military-grade aluminum) are located in grid regions that are poorly equipped to provide uninterrupted power supply.
▲ FIGURE 5: Distribution of Critical Industrial Capacity in PJM
Hosting 55 percent of U.S. titanium capacity, 50 percent of aluminum capacity, 31 percent of steel capacity, and 12 percent of semiconductor capacity, the PJM region exhibits particular geographic vulnerability. This concentration creates correlated failure risk: A single grid stress event could constrain multiple defense-critical supply chains simultaneously. Moreover, while PJM has historically been reliable, the region is facing a rapid deterioration in its ability to meet reliability standards. In its 2026 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, for example, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) identified PJM as a region of “elevated risk” for capacity shortfalls, adding that the area would reach “high risk” by 2029, with increases largely driven by demand growth and the expected retirement of generation capacity. For industrial consumers, this signals that the grid within PJM has little buffer left to absorb shocks and limited ability to grow production.
Gas Deliverability Constraints
Limited natural gas transportation and storage infrastructure creates what could be described as a dual-exposure risk for key U.S. industries. Facilities like steel and titanium foundries rely on gas twice: first as a direct fuel for high-temperature smelting, and second as a primary fuel for the electricity grids that power their operations.
This twofold gas dependency is concentrated in major grid regions: the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), PJM, the Southeastern Electric Reliability Council (SERC), and ERCOT, all of which relied on natural gas for at least 40 percent of their generation mix as of 2024. These five, gas-dependent regions also host the overwhelming majority of critical U.S. industrial capacity (Figures 3 and 4), including 97 percent of steel capacity, 84 percent of titanium capacity, 82 percent of aluminum capacity, and 57 percent of semiconductor capacity.
Consequently, when gas deliverability is constrained, manufacturers face a compounded crisis: direct fuel shortages for their furnaces alongside spiking prices for their electricity. A lack of adequate storage further mediates this risk, as insufficient storage capacity limits the ability of facilities and system operators to manage periods of peak demand when deliverability is constrained.
To determine and assess geographic variation in this risk, this analysis uses winter price-based volatility—calculated as the standard deviation of the difference between Citygate prices and the Louisiana benchmark prices over winter months (November to March) for the five-year period from 2019 to 2024—as a proxy for physical deliverability risks during peak stress periods.
Applying this metric across states reveals a clear divergence in regional gas security. While the nationwide median winter-based volatility is relatively stable at $0.94 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), the data in Figure 4 highlights instability in specific regions, with price volatility reaching as high as $4.44/MMBtu, over 100 percent above the official benchmark for North American natural gas spot pricing, commonly referred to as the Henry Hub because it is the price of natural gas for immediate delivery at the Henry Hub in Erath, Louisiana. The highest volatility is clustered in the Southern Plains and the Mountain West, indicating potential gas deliverability constraints. Oklahoma ($10.47/MMBtu) and Texas ($6.71/MMBtu) exhibit the most extreme decoupling from the benchmark, followed by Kansas ($4.82/MMBtu), Arizona ($4.47/MMBtu), and California ($4.43/MMBtu).
▲ FIGURE 6: Critical Industrial Capacity Exposure to Winter Gas-Price Volatility
Applying a threshold of $2/MMBtu for winter-based volatility identifies a distinct “high-risk region” of 18 states, with Texas having the highest price volatility (Figure 4). This concentration of risk creates a disproportionate exposure for the semiconductor industry: 32 percent of U.S. fabrication capacity is also located within Texas. The implications here extend beyond fuel costs. Because high prices in these regions frequently signal physical deliverability constraints, fabs face the threat of abrupt fuel or power curtailments that can scrap millions of dollars in sensitive work-in-progress inventory, as occurred in 2021. In contrast, heavy metal production is slightly more secure; only 24 percent of steel and 16 percent of titanium capacity falls above the $2/MMBtu threshold, while aluminum smelting capacity is entirely absent from the highest-risk regions.
The remaining critical industry capacity is primarily concentrated in PJM, where winter-based volatility averages approximately $1/MMBtu, approximately 20 to 25 percent of 2024 Henry Hub prices. While prices have historically been less volatile in this region, deliverability risk remains. Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022, for example, triggered widespread gas production freeze-offs and pipeline pressure drops. This resulted in elevated gas prices throughout PJM and the activation of a variety of emergency procedures. Even in regions with moderate baseline volatility, deliverability constraints can rapidly escalate into systemic supply threats.
Compounded Exposure and Its Implications
Neither grid reliability nor gas deliverability risk exist in isolation. This section examines where convergence across these risks occurs and the implications for defense-critical industrial facilities.
▲ FIGURE 7: Critical Industry Facility Distribution Exposure Risks Facility Distribution at the County (PSVI) and State Levels (Winter Gas Price Volatility)
The dual-axis charts found in Figure 7 show the distribution of critical industries across PSVI and winter gas price volatility. Facilities with both high PSVI scores and high gas price volatility are located in the top right quadrant (red) of each industry chart.
Figure 7 plots each facility by its county-level PSVI score (x-axis) and state-level winter gas price volatility (y-axis), with bubble size proportional to capacity. Independently, both metrics indicate potential failure points: A high PSVI score reflects grid unreliability, while an elevated gas price volatility number signals pipeline deliverability constraints. Together, the risks compound. During extreme winter events, regions with high gas price volatility face difficulty accessing supply both for electricity generation and for direct industrial use. Gas-fired power plants—which represent roughly half of ERCOT’s energy generation capacity and a significant share in MISO—compete for the constrained supply, weakening the grid precisely when demand peaks. Industrial facilities then face two simultaneous failure modes: an inability to procure natural gas directly and an elevated probability of electricity outage from a stressed grid. The shaded regions in Figure 7 mark thresholds for elevated risk on each axis; facilities in the upper-right quadrant face this compounded exposure. Twenty-seven percent of U.S. semiconductor fabs sit in counties with both high PSVI and elevated gas volatility, the majority of which are concentrated in ERCOT.
As a result, semiconductor fabs face the most acute dual exposure. Nearly half of U.S. fab capacity is located in high-PSVI counties, and another half is located in states with high gas volatility—with significant overlap of the two risk metrics in Texas. Semiconductor facilities have the longest reconstitution timelines in the industrial base; advanced fabs take years to build and require sustained, uninterrupted power to operate. Winter Storm Uri (February 13–17, 2021) demonstrated this vulnerability: Samsung, NXP, and Infineon were all asked to shut down fabrication facilities to preserve residential power supply. These forced shutdowns resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in scrapped semiconductor wafers and weeks of lost production time, demonstrating how quickly the double-failure of gas and grid can paralyze the sector. Steel production shows a split risk profile. Roughly 14 percent of facilities face this dual exposure in ERCOT and western MISO, while a larger share—35 percent of total U.S. capacity—sits in high-PSVI counties in PJM and the Ohio Valley, but where gas volatility is lower.
Titanium and aluminum face electricity-dominant risk. Titanium production is the most concentrated: 73 percent of U.S. capacity sits in high-PSVI counties, predominantly within PJM, but only 16 percent of total capacity faces elevated gas volatility. Aluminum presents a similar profile. The four primary smelters all operate in moderate-to-high PSVI regions with low gas volatility exposure. However, these facilities have already demonstrated acute sensitivity to electricity market conditions. For example, Century Aluminum’s smelter in Hawesville, Kentucky—the largest producer of aluminum in North America—was idled in 2022 when power costs tripled, resulting in a production halt of 9 to 12 months.
▲ Table 2: Overall Energy Infrastructure Exposure by Sector
These vulnerabilities are embedded in the current system under baseline demand conditions. Winter Storms Uri (2021) and Elliott (2022) and the resulting energy constraints and production decreases occurred during normal peacetime operations. Under the wartime scenarios presented here, energy demand could rise between 3- and 14-fold across the steel, titanium, electronics, and aluminum production industries. Higher demand would mean that facilities have to operate at higher capacity factors, drawing more power and more gas, pushing systems closer to their limits. The probability of hitting the failure points identified here will likely increase in these scenarios. The margin for error under mobilization is thin, and the infrastructure serving these facilities was not designed for surge conditions. Yet mobilization is not the only source of demand growth pressuring these systems. Data center expansion—driven by cloud computing and AI workloads—is adding substantial new load to the grid regions where critical industrial capacity is already concentrated, thus competing for the same transmission capacities, generation resources, and gas supplies that the defense industrial base may need to call upon.
Data Center Demand as Additional Grid Pressure
The energy vulnerabilities identified above reflect baseline conditions. However, the rapid growth and demand for AI technologies is adding additional pressure for limited energy resources, particularly in areas with critical industry concentration.
▲ FIGURE 8: Planned Data Center Development and Critical Industry Concentration by Region. Source: Michael Thomas, “Data Centers in the United States,” Cleanview, updated March 2026; and “Dec 09, 2025 Board of Directors Meeting,” ERCOT, December 9, 2025.
Figure 8 shows planned data center capacity by energy grid operators alongside the count of critical industrial facilities in each region. The scale is significant: ERCOT alone has 163.0 gigawatts (GW) of data center capacity in development, followed by PJM at 48.5 GW and MISO at 12.1 GW. To put this in perspective, PJM’s summer 2025 peak load was 161 GW; planned data center additions represent roughly 30 percent of that peak.
PJM, ERCOT, and MISO are the three grid regions with the highest planned data center capacity and the highest concentration of critical industrial facilities. PJM hosts 23 facilities across steel, semiconductors, aluminum, and titanium production, while also absorbing the second-largest amount (48.5GW) of data center growth. MISO supports 25 facilities, with 12.1 GW of data center development underway. ERCOT, already identified as a dual-risk zone for semiconductor fabrication, is slated to add 163 GW of new data center load. As Figure 8 illustrates, the grid regions facing the most significant electricity and gas vulnerabilities are also the regions absorbing the largest share of new data center demand.
This convergence creates cumulative pressure on constrained infrastructure. Both data center and industrial loads require high reliability and have limited ability to curtail their demand during grid stress events. Moreover, both draw on the same generation capacity, transmission infrastructure, and fuel supply. The challenge is not that these loads compete against each other for resources, but rather that grid infrastructure must accommodate both. Currently, that infrastructure is not materializing quickly enough. PJM’s interim CEO acknowledged in early 2026 that new generation capacity faces obstacles, including transmission upgrades, permitting, and supply chain bottlenecks and that meaningful new capacity is unlikely to come online before 2032. The demand is arriving faster than the supply-side response.
Finally, the baseline demands against which any mobilization surge would occur are not static. In fact, demands are shifting upward as data center load comes online. The infrastructure decisions being made today—such as which projects clear the interconnection queue or which transmission lines get built—will determine whether capacity exists when it is needed.
Policy Implications and Pathways Forward
The binding constraint on defense industrial energy resilience is not national energy supply. Instead, it is the speed at which key grid regions can add firm generation, transmission, and pipeline infrastructure to industrial clusters. In regions like PJM—where defense-relevant materials production is concentrated—resource adequacy is quickly becoming a race between rising reliability needs and growing infrastructure timelines that now stretch into the next decade.
PJM illustrates these dynamics most acutely. The region hosts over 30, 50, and 55 percent of U.S. steel, aluminum, and titanium production capacity, respectively, much of it in high-PSVI counties. The infrastructure required to close this gap is not materializing at the necessary pace—interconnection timelines have stretched from two to eight years, gas turbine lead times now extend from six to seven years, and 46 GW of projects with signed agreements remain unable to begin construction. These frictions are national: ERCOT faces similar capacity constraints, and MISO has flagged reliability risk in its northern regions.
Under the mobilization scenarios presented in this paper, energy demand for defense-critical materials could increase between two- and sixfold. Facilities producing titanium sponge, military-grade steel, and semiconductor components would draw more power from grids that are already capacity-constrained. Addressing these vulnerabilities requires action before a crisis materializes.
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Recommendation 1: Extend defense-critical electric infrastructure designations to the industrial base.
Federal law already provides a useful organizing concept: “Defense Critical Electric Infrastructure” (DCEI) refers to electric infrastructure that serves a critical defense facility but is not owned or operated by that facility—capturing the core dependency this paper identifies. The problem is that DCEI is currently applied almost exclusively to military installations, and the vulnerabilities documented here exist at non-military industrial nodes: titanium sponge facilities, aluminum smelters, steel mills, and semiconductor fabs, along with supporting specialized sub-tier suppliers. If energy is a regional constraint on wartime production, the Department of Defense (DOD) cannot treat industrial energy resilience as an undifferentiated grid problem. The DOD needs a process to determine which non-DOD facilities functionally behave like critical defense facilities in a mobilization scenario, and which upstream electric and gas assets constitute their outside-the-fence dependencies.
This makes supply chain illumination a gating step. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) documents persistent difficulty in acquiring sub-tier supplier information due to limited contractual requirements, and the DOD’s Defense Business Board emphasizes that most organizations lack visibility beyond prime contractors. If the DOD cannot reliably identify the sub-tier suppliers that produce defense-critical materials and components, it cannot credibly identify the energy infrastructure that must be secured to keep wartime production running.
There is concern with any such mapping effort that the existence of detailed information about defense-critical facilities and their infrastructure dependencies could create targeting risk. Here, existing law provides a solution. Section 215A establishes the Critical Electric Infrastructure Information (CEII) framework, jointly administered by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which provides statutory protection for sensitive infrastructure data. Information designated as CEII is explicitly exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and cannot be released by any federal, state, or local authority under public disclosure laws. The CEII framework also facilitates voluntary sharing of protected information among federal agencies, state authorities, regional transmission organizations, reliability coordinators, and owners and operators of critical infrastructure—all under non-disclosure agreements that restrict use to specified purposes.
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Recommendation 2: Create a dedicated permitting and finance pathway for energy assurance at designated industrial facilities.
Once identified as defense-critical production facilities, energy upgrades by those fabs cannot be treated as ordinary infrastructure projects, as doing so will create a mismatch between stakes and timelines. Building additional infrastructure is necessary, but doing so at the speed demanded to meet mobilization demand will require permitting and financing incentives to catalyze capital. Two existing federal authorities provide the foundation for potential implementation pathways.
Title III of the Defense Production Act authorizes direct federal investment to create, expand, or restore industrial base capabilities essential to national defense. The DOD has already used Title III to address capacity constraints throughout the defense supply chain: $23 million to Constellium for aluminum casting capacity, $45.5 million to Arconic for high-purity aluminum production, and $90 million to Albemarle for domestic lithium mining. In 2022, President Biden issued a determination authorizing Title III for transformers and electric grid components. In 2023, the statutory investment ceiling was waived for supply chains including power and energy storage.
Title III funds can and have been deployed in a variety of manners, including direct loans, loan guarantees, purchase orders, grants, and subsidies. These financing instruments can help address the rising costs of construction, private capital, and inflation that energy generation and infrastructure developers are facing.
However, existing federal permitting processes are not yet designed to treat energy infrastructure upgrades at industrial nodes as time-sensitive national security investments. Projects that would improve power supply to defense-critical facilities compete in the same interconnection queues and face the same siting disputes as routine commercial development. Moreover, EISA 2007 Section 433 mandates the elimination of on-site fossil fuel consumption in new and substantially renovated federal buildings by 2030. While industrial process loads are exempt, building operational systems at DOD-owned manufacturing facilities, such as shipyards or ammunition plants, remain covered. The implementing regulation is currently stayed, but it could delay energy upgrades under a mobilization scenario if reimplemented. A dedicated pathway could expedite permitting for generation, transmission, and pipeline projects that directly serve designated defense-critical facilities. Such a pathway should also clarify the applicability of Section 433 to DOD-owned industrial facilities, ensuring that fossil fuel restrictions do not impede energy upgrades critical to mobilization. The model here is analogous to the expedited environmental review processes that already exist for military construction projects under 10 USC § 2801, adapted for the civilian energy infrastructure on which defense production depends.
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Recommendation 3: Integrate energy resilience into defense supply chain risk assessments.
The vulnerabilities identified in this paper arise from the interaction of two systems that are currently assessed in isolation: the defense supply chain and the energy grid. The DOD’s supply chain risk management frameworks evaluate material availability, supplier concentration, and foreign dependency, but not whether the energy infrastructure serving domestic suppliers can sustain production under stress. Conversely, grid reliability assessments by regional transmission organizations and NERC evaluate system adequacy in aggregate but do not account for the defense-criticality of specific industrial loads in their analyses.
Bridging this gap requires adding energy infrastructure metrics to the criteria that the DOD uses to assess supply chain risk. At a minimum, this would mean incorporating grid reliability data (such as PSVI scores or NERC reliability assessments) and gas deliverability indicators into the risk profiles maintained for critical suppliers. More ambitiously, addressing this gap could involve joint planning exercises between the DOD, DOE, FERC, and regional transmission organizations to stress-test energy supply to defense-critical industrial clusters under mobilization scenarios. The regional energy resilience exercises that the DOD already conducts for military installations could be extended to encompass the industrial nodes on which those installations depend. Such exercises would identify specific infrastructure investments—such as a transmission upgrade here, a pipeline lateral there, or on-site generation at a critical facility—that would materially reduce the probability of energy-driven production interruptions during a crisis.
Conclusion
The United States has enough energy to power a wartime industrial mobilization. What it potentially lacks, however, is the infrastructure required to deliver that energy to the places where it is needed. This paper has shown that the binding constraint on defense industrial energy resilience is not national supply but rather regional delivery: the capacity of specific grid regions and pipeline networks to serve the production facilities on which the defense industrial base depends.
The geography of this risk is not random. Critical materials production concentrates in PJM and ERCOT—regions facing eroding reserve margins, gas deliverability constraints, and surging data center demands. Under mobilization, energy demand could increase two- to sixfold, pushing infrastructure not designed for surge conditions closer to failure.
World War II taught the United States that energy constraints on wartime production are foreseeable and preventable, but only if the government acts before a crisis materializes. During the interwar period, the War Department’s power surveys, construction controls, and power pooling mandates prevented the energy shortfalls that had hampered production in World War I from repeating in World War II. In 2026, the tools are different, but the principle is the same: Identify where energy infrastructure and defense production intersect, and invest in closing the gaps before they bind the system. The recommendations in this paper—extending defense-critical infrastructure designations to the industrial base, creating dedicated permitting and finance pathways, and integrating energy resilience into supply chain risk assessments—represent a first step toward that end. The infrastructure decisions made now will determine whether the United States can produce what it needs, when it needs it, and at the scale a serious conflict would demand.
Annex
This annex describes the methodology used in a March 2026 study, “Energy Infrastructure and the Defense Industrial Base.” It begins by providing the embodied energy and critical industrial facility sources and assumptions. It then provides the production rates for each weapons system, examines the study’s methodological limitations and their impact on the analysis, and offers a detailed description of each platform included in the modelling, including how each fits into the study’s three scenarios.
Table A-1 documents the embodied energy factors used in this analysis, their sources, and the research team’s key assumptions. Embodied energy represents the cumulative energy consumed in extracting, processing, and manufacturing materials from cradle to factory gate.
Critical Industrial Facility Location Data Sources and Limitations
Data on U.S. steel plant locations and capacity were drawn from the Global Iron and Steel Plant Tracker. Titanium plant data was sourced from the 2021 USGS Mineral Yearbook. Aluminum plant locations and capacity were compiled from publicly available industry sources for the Alcoa Warrick facility, the Alcoa Massena facility, the Century Aluminum Sebree facility, and the Century Aluminum Mt. Holly facility. Semiconductor fabrication facility data was cross-referenced across Wikipedia and multiple industry and government sources to verify location and capacity. This category includes conventional silicon fabs producing logic, memory, and analog integrated circuits, as well as compound semiconductor facilities (GaAs, GaN, SiC), micro-electronical systems (MEMS) and photonics foundries, and specialty fabrication sites for optoelectronics, radio frequency filters, and quantum processors. Note that semiconductor facilities without publicly available production capacity data were assumed to have a conservative production estimate of 10,000 chips annually.
▲ Table A-1: Material Embodied Energy (EE), Sources, and Assumptions
▲ Table A-2: Mobilization Scenario Rates by Defense System
Defining Peer War
This analysis assumes that a war between the United States and China will be a protracted one. Due to the long lead times associated with most of the platforms analyzed here, only a war that lasts more than a year or two is likely to have any impact on the production of these platforms.
The war rate scenario lacks a strong empirical basis for forecasting: The modern era has not seen a war between great powers as powerful as the United States and China. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. government has released no documents detailing its planning assumptions for such a protracted war.
Nor are published wargame results much use. Despite the fact that some wargames publish loss and munitions expenditure rates, they mostly focus on the initial stages of the fighting between the United States and China rather than a protracted industrial war between the two countries. These wargames and similar models have demonstrated that munitions expenditure and losses have been enormous. However, expenditure of different types of munitions and platforms surge early in a conflict and then decline to reach varied usage rates as the conflict protracts. While both sides may want to produce enough platforms and munitions to allow usage rates comparable to the initial spasm of violence, the war in Ukraine suggests that reaching such a rate of production is extremely unlikely.
This study’s solution was to look to history: specifically, World War II. A U.S. buildup on the scale of the World War II mobilization is unlikely today. However, it represents a useful scenario for testing the extent of demands that might be placed on the U.S. energy supply during a protracted war with China.
One major difference is the high complexity associated with modern systems relative to those used in World War II. To account for that difference, the research team used lower-complexity analogues when thinking about extrapolating from World War II–era production patterns. Assuming that the United States could possibly complete construction of 18 aircraft carriers in less than four years, as it did during World War II, would be ludicrous. Instead, we assumed that a World War II naval combatants more closely resembled a modern fighter aircraft in its production complexity and that production of such aircraft could be scaled at similar levels as U.S. large warship production in World War II.
Methodological Limitations
INHERENT UNCERTAINTY
The method used in this report involves many limitations. The first is the inherent uncertainty about the future. The U.S. Navy cannot predict what ships it will want to build (or that will be successfully commissioned) in even a few years. Nor have past efforts to predict losses or munitions expenditure rates seen much success. As such, the scenarios should not be considered predictions. Rather, they represent heuristic tools for thinking systematically about risk.
An inability to predict the future does not represent a major obstacle to this analysis, which is focused on identifying areas of fragility. Fragility is a structural aspect of complex systems that render them prone to failure. Fragile systems are characterized by overconcentration, internal homogeneity, and lack of redundancy. As a result, such systems are overly dependent on single points of failure and vulnerable to shocks. Scenario analysis allows analysts to target their search for such points of failure in a systematic way based on plausible shocks that could affect a system.
DATA AVAILABILITY
The second major limitation relates to data availability, the lack of which puts downward pressure on the estimates presented here. Most importantly, this report relied entirely on open sources, which required a variety of assumptions, described below.
The embodied energy analysis makes a large number of simplifying assumptions that systematically bias energy analysis downwards. Major weapons systems are enormously complex. For example, one F-35 contains more than 40,000 individual parts alone. Even if the details of these parts were unclassified, including all of the individual parts in an embodied energy analysis would impose unacceptable costs. Instead, we focus on the largest known components, which we assume are most likely to influence the energy demands of production. However, there may be highly energy-intensive materials involved in other subsystems of which we are not aware.
A more important source of bias is the lack of embodied energy data on military-grade components. Because the analysis uses embodied energy estimates from public databases, it almost certainly underestimates the embodied energy of military-grade components. Military-grade steel, for example, is produced to higher standards than civilian steel, especially the type of steel used for the highest-end systems, such as nuclear submarines. It seems reasonable to assume that the same will be true for most of the components included in the embodied energy analysis.
Another critical source of bias is the absence of data on energy use during assembly and production. Energy-intensive processes like high-precision machine tooling and nuclear welding are used in the manufacture of many of the weapons systems examined here, but the research team was unable to find reliable data on how much energy these processes used.
Although the government presumably has better data on some of these questions, data availability problems are not only the result of this project’s exclusive use of open sources. According to a 2025 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the main government procurement database only provides visibility into first-tier suppliers or “prime contractors.” Although the DOD is increasing its efforts to understand its own supply chain, these efforts are still limited relative to the enormous complexity of defense supply chains, which the department estimates involve more than 200,000 suppliers.
SCOPE CONDITIONS
A third source of downward pressure on this report’s estimates is the fact that not every weapons system produced by the U.S. defense industry could possibly be included in this analysis. The resources required to analyze the dozens (if not hundreds) of vehicles, munitions, and other products used by the U.S. military would have quickly outstripped those available for this research. To keep the scope manageable, this analysis focused only on high-end combat aircraft, warships, and a few types of munitions deemed to be particularly important for war between the United States and China.
A fourth source of downward pressure is the focus on specific materials that interviews and initial desk research indicated were likely to constitute the largest energy demands either due to their high proportion of system composition (e.g., steel for warships) or their high embodied energy (e.g., semiconductors). This means that many potentially important materials were excluded from the analysis, such as the copper and silica glass needed for the miles of cables required for large warships. This scoping assumption means that the analysis is not capable of demonstrating what the most vulnerable inputs are from an energy perspective, merely of pointing to key pressure points from among the assessed materials.
A final source of bias, which partially counteracts the downward biases identified above, is the fact that defense production is highly multinational. Many components and even some final products are made outside of the United States, which means they draw on a different energy supply than production that occurs within the United States. This has two implications for the analysis presented in this paper. The first is that the embodied energy calculated for the systems examined here is higher, potentially much higher, than the embodied energy of the components manufactured in the United States. The second is that the supply of energy for total defense production is much greater than the United States itself provides.
Systems Breakdown
WARSHIPS
The baseline scenario represents a continuation of current shipbuilding trends. Naval shipbuilding has stagnated for a variety of reasons, and this scenario assumes most of the problems remain unsolved over the next 10 years. The main source for the buildup scenario was the most recent U.S. Navy Annual Long-Range Shipbuilding Plan, which was released March 2024. During a war, production was assumed to less than double due to the extreme complexity of modern warship construction. This puts wartime warship production slightly over Reagan-era buildup rates.
- Ford-Class Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier (CVN)
Ford-class carriers are the world’s largest warships. The USS Gerald R. Ford displaces about 100,000 tons fully loaded. This analysis assumes that the ship uses about 50,000 tons of steel, about half its displacement. It also assumes that the ship has about 96 tons of electronics in its radar systems and another 400 tons in other combat electronics.
Both the baseline and buildup scenario envisions an average delivery rate of 0.25 carriers per year per the 2024 shipbuilding plan. The number of carriers in the U.S. fleet is set by Congress, and we assume that industry will be able to meet the goal of one carrier delivery every four years due to the extremely high-profile nature of the platform and associated legal mandates. We assume only a small increase in production to 0.33 per year in the war rate scenario due to the extreme complexity and size of a CVN.
- Arleigh Burke-Class Destroyer (DDG)
The Arleigh Burke Flight III displaces about 10,000 tons, about half of which we assume is steel for the hull. We model several subsystems: the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (190 tons of steel), the Mk 45 naval gun (21 tons of steel), and the Aegis system (50 tons of steel and 30 tons of electronics).
The baseline scenario assumes that the recent historical trend of one to two Arleigh Burke deliveries holds for an average rate of 1.5 ships constructed each year. The 2024 shipbuilding plan envisioned beginning construction of the next-generation DDG(X) in FY 2032 while sustaining Arleigh Burke Flight III construction. Although the plan anticipates a seven-ship delivery of large surface combatants in 2035, the buildup scenario assumes a delivery rate of three per year, in line with the average delivery rate between 2030 and 2040. The war rate scenario assumes a five-ship annual production rate, two hulls under the maximum envisioned delivery year in the 2024 shipbuilding plan.
- Constellation-Class Frigate (FFG)
The Constellation-class frigate was a small surface combatant that was still under construction during modelling. It displaces about 8,000 tons, about half of which we assume was steel for the hull. The Constellation was also set to have an Mk 41 VLS system (although the ship carried fewer cells than the Arleigh Burke-class), an Mk 110 naval gun (7.5 tons), and a variant of the Aegis system, which we assumed would have the same specifications of its cousin on the Arleigh Burke-class.
The 2024 shipbuilding plan assumes a delivery rate of two FFGs per year throughout the first half of the 2030s, although it would quickly climb to three in the following years. However, the Navy canceled the program in late 2025. The Navy’s plans for replacing the Constellation were not known at the time of modelling, so the buildup scenario uses three Constellations a year as an input based on post-2035 delivery estimates. Due to the recent change and the long lead times associated with first-in-class ships, we assume that the baseline scenario involves no FFG production. The war rate scenario assumes the same production rate as the Arleigh Burke: five ships per year.
- Virginia-Class Nuclear-Powered Attack Submarine (SSN)
A Virginia-class boat displaces about 8,700 tons. Some newer boats are being built with an addition the Navy calls the Virginia Payload Module (VPM), which brings the displacement to 10,200 tons. We assume that about 60 percent of the displacement is steel. We assume that about 2 percent of the boat’s displacement is combat electronics.
The baseline scenario assumes minor increases in the annual production rate to 1.5 boats per year. It assumes that one-third of delivered boats lack the VPM and that the remainder are VPM variants. The buildup scenario envisions annual delivery of two SSNs each year, both of which are VPM variants. The war rate scenario assumes production of three boats per year, all of which are VPM variants.
- Columbia-Class Nuclear-Powered Ballistic Missile Submarine (SSBN)
A Columbia-class boat will displace nearly 21,000 tons. We assume that about 60 percent of the displacement is steel: 12,600 tons. We assume that about 2 percent of the boat’s displacement is combat electronics: 420 tons.
No Columbias have yet been launched, so the baseline scenario takes a pessimistic view that the United States only produces one boat every two years (0.5 per year) to distinguish it from the buildup scenario, which envisions annual delivery of one SSBN each year. The war rate scenario assumes no further increase in SSBN production because they are not warfighting assets.
- Amphibious Assault Ships
The scenarios included two types of amphibious assault ship: the America-class landing helicopter assault ship (LHA) and San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock (LPD). The America-class LHA displaces about 49,000 tons. This analysis assumes that the ship uses about 24,500 tons of steel, about half its displacement. It also assumes that the ship has about 250 tons in combat electronics. The San Antonio-class LPD displaces about 24,900 tons, and we made the same assumptions.
The baseline scenario assumes an average of 0.2 and 0.5 America-class and San Antonio-class ships produced each year. The buildup scenario assumed that the defense industry would complete one amphibious assault ship per year. These were divided between 0.3 LHAs and 0.7 LPDs each year. The war rate scenario assumes a 50 percent increase due to the relatively low complexity compared with a Ford-class CVN.
- Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC)
This analysis assumes that U.S. unmanned surface combatants will closely resemble Blue Water Autonomy’s proposed “Liberty-class” unmanned ship. This proposed MASC displaces about 850 tons and can carry about 160 tons of containerized materiel—probably Mk 70 VLS systems.
Using the same assumptions as detailed above for other surface craft, we assume that about 50 percent of that displacement is its hull—which in this case is made of aluminum—and about 2 percent is combat electronics.
No MASCs were under serial production during the period of analysis, but Navy force structure plans suggest eventual procurement of “as many as several dozen MASCs.” The Navy’s 2024 shipbuilding plan called for between 89 and 149 unmanned platforms by 2045. Assuming that 2035 would occur during a gradual ramp-up of production, we assumed a baseline scenario of nine MASCs per year and a buildup scenario of 15 MASCs per year in the mid-2030s. Both are in line with Blue Water Autonomy’s predictions regarding possible production rates.
To estimate production during a war rate buildup, we assumed that MASCs were approximately as difficult to produce (given changes in technology) as World War II–era submarines, which roughly quintupled by 1945 among Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Assuming that the United States is on its way to achieving the maximum production rate predicted by Blue Water Autonomy (20 per year) when a war begins, we assume a wartime production rate of 100 MASCs per year in the mid-2030s—about five years into a war.
COMBAT AIRCRAFT
No counterpart to the Navy’s shipbuilding plan exists for combat aircraft, so we generally use think tank and industry statements to assess what a buildup rate could look like. For the war rate scenario, we generally assume that that production could be roughly doubled from a buildup already under way. The United States was able to accomplish this with large surface combatants in World War II, which were much more complex than the aircraft of the time. In addition, the United States lost between 90 and 744 combat aircraft in iterations of a CSIS wargame that covered one to three weeks of a U.S.-China war. We assume that at peak production the United States will be making strides toward replacing those losses and building air forces capable of ending the conflict, with war rate production of about 670 manned aircraft and 1,500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) per year. This is significantly greater than Reagan-era buildup delivery rates but plausible with a nationwide industrial mobilization. Unlike shipbuilding, the United States has a large aircraft industry, and production capacity can be shifted (albeit incompletely) between civilian and military production.
- F-35 Lightning II
The F-35 Lightning II is the U.S. military’s most modern multirole fighter in operation. The U.S. government has announced that it will order more than 2,000 F-35s to replace the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Based on Lockheed Martin data, we assume that the airframe consists of approximately 40 percent aluminum, 13 percent graphite-epoxy, 21 percent graphite-BMI, and 15 percent titanium. The empty weight of an F-35 is 29,300 lbs. Although the full weight of the airframe is less than the full weight of the plane, we assume that the remaining parts have comparable proportions of these materials. In addition, we assume that the F-35’s 6,422 lbs. F135 engine is made entirely of titanium and that 7 percent of the airplane’s weight consists of various types of electronics.
Lockheed Martin currently produces about 156 F-35s per year, although it is probably capable of increasing production to more than 190 planes per year. We therefore use 156 planes as the baseline rate. The DOD plans to eventually purchase 2,460 F-35s. Given that the U.S. military currently operates about 740 F-35s, procuring the remaining 1,720 in the next 10 years would be potentially manageable at rates barely over current production. A buildup scenario assumes that the DOD seeks to hit that target in seven years, requiring an eventual production rate of about 250 F-35s per year.
To estimate the war rate, we assume that modern fighter aircraft are approximately as difficult to produce as the most complex World War II–era surface combatants and submarines. Principal surface combatant and submarine commissionings approximately doubled from 1941 to 1942, so we assume a doubling of F-35 production from the buildup rate to about 500 per year would be plausible after a full wartime mobilization.
- F-15EX Eagle II
We assume that the fighter’s empty weight of 14,500 kg is distributed between aluminum, titanium, steel, and composites according to publicly available data on the F-15. We assume that its two engines are made entirely of titanium and that, like other fighter aircraft in the model, that 7 percent of its weight is made up of electronics.
Currently, Boeing is increasing production to a steady rate of about 24 F-15EXs each year, which we consider to be the baseline rate. The Air Force seems to consider 36 F-15EXs per year an achievable buildup rate. We make the same assumptions regarding war rate production as in the case of the F-35, for an annual rate of 72 aircraft.
- F/A-XX
The F/A-XX is a still-notional replacement to the F/A-18 Hornet, the U.S. Navy’s most numerous combat aircraft. Its specifications are still to be determined, so we assume that it is an F/A-18 with the airframe material percentages of an F-35. We assume that it will use two 2,450 lbs. titanium engines and that, as is the case with all other fighters, 7 percent of its weight is electronics.
In the baseline scenario, we assume that the fighter has been deprioritized and is not in production in 2035. In the buildup scenario, we assume it is in early, low-rate production of about two per year. Finally, we assume that development of such an aircraft would be deprioritized in a war in order to produce proven aircraft like the F-35 or develop new types of airframes more suitable for quick mass production, leading to a war rate of zero.
- B-21 Raider
The B-21 Raider is the next generation of U.S. bomber. It weighs roughly 70,000 lbs, and we assume it consists of 39 percent composite (like the B-2), 15 percent aluminum, 7 percent steel, 39 percent titanium (like the F-22), and 7 percent electronics (like all other modelled combat aircraft).
Although actual production targets for the B-21 remain classified, it is generally assumed to be about seven per year, which we adopt as the baseline. The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies recommends a much higher acquisition rate, which we assume to be a buildup rate. As with other extremely complex platforms, we assume that the United States can roughly double production of the B-21 for war rate production.
- F-47 Next Generation Air Superiority Fighter
The F-47 is the U.S. military’s notional sixth-generation air superiority fighter. Almost nothing has been released about its specifications, so we assume it to be identical to the F-22.
The Air Force plans to replace the F-22 with the F-47, so we assume the baseline production rate to be about 20 per year—the same rate achieved by F-22 production at full-rate production. However, the Mitchell Institute has also suggested a higher F-47 acquisition target of 300 aircraft, so we assume a buildup rate of 32 fighters per year and a war rate production of 64 per year.
- Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)
CCAs are a generic term for what will likely become a variety of unmanned combat aircraft designed to fly as part of a formation with a manned aircraft. Since little information is publicly available, we assume the entire airframe to be made of carbon epoxy except the titanium engine. We assume that 10 percent of the aircraft’s weight will be electronics to account for the relatively high role they will play in an autonomous system.
The U.S. Air Force stated under the Biden administration that it sought a CCA fleet of about 1,000 aircraft. To meet that goal in about 15 years implies a baseline rate of about 120 per year after several years of low-rate production. While it is difficult to separate marketing language from true production capability, Anduril and General Atomics both claim to be able to produce hundreds of CCAs each year. We therefore assume that in the buildup scenario, the producers are both able to achieve their goals and the Air Force wants many more CCAs, resulting in a rate of 300 per year. As is the case with the MASC, we assume that CCAs are roughly equivalent in complexity to World War II–era submarines, which implies a major increase in production to reach a war rate of about 1,500 per year.
LONG-RANGE PRECISION MUNITIONS
Due to the variety of long-range precision munitions in the U.S. arsenal, this analysis uses examples of relatively low- and high-end long-range munitions that might plausibly be used in a conflict with China.
- GBU-39B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB)
The SDB is a 250 lbs. GPS/inertial navigation system–guided glide bomb suitable for all-weather, around-the-clock operations. It is produced in two variants, one of which has a longer range but a much higher price tag. The warhead contains about 37 lbs. of high explosive, and we assume the remainder is a mix of steel and aluminum, plus 5 percent of its weight in electronics.
We assume the baseline production of SDB variants is about 3,200 (2,500 of the less-capable SDB and about 1,700 of the more advanced SBD II), the average of annual production across the lifetime of the program. We assume that buildup production would sustain the highest annual production rate for multiple years: 9,500 (about 30 percent of which are the more advanced SBD II). We assume that modern guided munitions are comparable in complexity to World War II–era combat aircraft. Using U.S. aircraft production as an analogue, we assume that the United States can increase its production from the base rate approximately ninefold to a war rate of about 30,000.
- Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) Family
The JASSM family includes three missiles: the JASSM, JASSM-Extended Range (JASSM-ER), and the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM). The JASSM is no longer in production, and the JASSM-ER and LRASM are sufficiently similar that we model them as one missile type. These missiles are likely to play a critical role in a conflict with China. The JASSM weighs about 2,250 lbs. and carries about 240 lbs. of plastic explosive. We assume that the remainder of the 1,000 lbs. warhead is steel and that it has a 100 lbs. titanium engine. We further assume that 5 percent of the remaining mass is electronics while the rest consists of aluminum and composites.
Despite lower historical rates of delivery, we assume that Lockheed Martin will achieve its stated goal of producing 1,100 JASSMs at baseline. We assume that production roughly doubles for a buildup, and that the United States eventually achieves a production rate of about 10,000 per year in a war rate production scenario in line with German combat aircraft production trends.
- Tomahawk Missile
The Tomahawk uses a comparable warhead to the JASSM, so they are considered to be identical. The engine weight of the most recent production block remains classified, so we assume it to have a 141 lbs. Williams F107 engine. We assume that the remainder of the Tomahawk, like the JASSM, consists of electronics, aluminum, and composites. Finally, it also has 600 lbs. ARC/CSD solid-fuel booster, of which the booster itself weighs about 350 lbs., meaning that the rocket fuel likely weighs about 250 lbs.
Recent reporting suggests baseline Tomahawk production of about 60 missiles per year. The producer’s goal, however, is to achieve a production rate of about 1,000 per year, which would represent a sizable buildup. We look at the example of U.S. aircraft production from 1936 to the height of the war as a model and assume that the United States will be producing a war rate of 1,815 Tomahawks about five years into a war with China.
Joseph Majkut is the director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
Alexander Palmer is a fellow with the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism (WITT) Program at CSIS.
Raj Sawhney is an adjunct fellow (non-resident) with the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at CSIS.