The Stereotype

Manufacturing is primarily an economic and trade issue — about jobs, wages, and industrial competitiveness. National security is a separate domain, handled by defense appropriations and the military. The factory floor and the battlefield are different conversations.

The Reality

The ability to manufacture is the ability to defend. Every weapons system, every piece of military equipment, every critical medical supply and communications technology that national security depends on, has to be manufactured somewhere. When that capability erodes or moves offshore, so does the strategic option it supports.

The COVID-19 pandemic made this concrete: the United States could not rapidly scale domestic production of personal protective equipment, ventilators, or vaccine manufacturing capacity because the industrial base for those goods had largely moved abroad. The same vulnerability exists across the defense industrial base — and adversaries know it.

How the Manufacturing USA Network Supports Defense

Nine of the seventeen Manufacturing USA institutes are DOD-sponsored. Their mission is explicitly national security:

• ARM Institute (Pittsburgh, PA) builds enabled robotic systems for defense manufacturing applications and military readiness. Its collaboration with the Office of the Secretary of War on the ManTech Point of Need Challenge — and its AI enabled robotic quality inspection now running across 12 Stellantis plants — demonstrates the direct line from institute R&D to defense-industrial capability.
• America Makes (Youngstown, OH) has developed additive manufacturing techniques for high-Mach aircraft systems and works directly with DOD on defense-specific AM applications. Its Standardization Roadmap creates the technical foundation that defense contractors need to qualify additively manufactured components for military use.
• BioFabUSA (Manchester, NH) is building domestic cell-based and regenerative manufacturing capabilities that have direct defense medical applications — including tissue-engineered wound care and trauma treatment capabilities that cannot be sourced from foreign manufacturers in a conflict scenario. BioFabUSA’s DOL-approved Registered Apprenticeship Program for Biofabrication Technicians is also building the specialized workforce these capabilities require.
• PowerAmerica (Raleigh, NC) has commercialized 10+ wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor technologies — the power electronics underpinning electric vehicles, grid inverters, radar systems, and directed energy weapons. WBG semiconductors can reduce power conversion losses by 50%+ versus conventional silicon; 40% of PowerAmerica’s projects have reached or are approaching commercial scale, strengthening a domestic supply chain for a technology critical to both defense and energy independence.
• IACMI (Knoxville, TN) develops advanced composite materials used in aerospace structures, military vehicles, and protective systems. IACMI’s partnerships with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, and defense primes ensure that lightweight, high-strength composite manufacturing capabilities remain rooted in the United States.