Leaving aside the immense global consequences of abandoning Ukraine, American leaders who waver in supporting Ukraine overlook how increased supply demands of a major war revitalize the U.S. defense industrial base.

As great power competition deepens, the U.S. is ever more in need of a robust defense industry and institutions that can adopt innovations and sustain high-intensity warfare. Yet, the U.S. defense base is ill-prepared to meet increasing challenges after three decades of underinvestment, while bureaucratic structures at the Pentagon are often too outdated to adapt at the speed demanded to succeed on a contemporary battlefield. The soon-to-be presence of two U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike groups off the coast of Israel is intended to deter a wider conflict in the Middle East: A failure of deterrence could further emphasize the U.S.'s lack of a high-performance defense industrial base.

Continued U.S. military support for Ukraine, and perhaps increased support for Israel, provides the necessary shake-up of defense institutions. By reviving America’s aging defense base and requiring the Pentagon to rethink its stultified ways of buying vital equipment, continued U.S. support for Ukraine offers a dividend that prepares the U.S. for future wars.

Ukraine as a driver of U.S. defense production revival
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, American production of 155 mm artillery rounds — the most commonly used caliber in the U.S. artillery arsenal — was only 14,000 units per month. To put this number into perspective, the Ukrainian counteroffensive consumes up to 6,000 rounds per day (around 183,000 units per month). The Ukrainian military says that it needs 10,000 rounds per day to defeat the enemy. Russia fired its artillery at the staggering rate of 60,000 shells per day (1,830,000 units per month) at the peak of its barrages in 2023.

To satisfy the larger-than-expected Ukrainian need for artillery munitions, the U.S. has doubled its output to 28,000 shells per month as of August 2023. The Pentagon plans to reach the target of 1 million rounds per year (around 83,000 units per month) by fall 2025.

This increased capacity is there to stay, even when the war in Ukraine ends. The U.S. Army invested about $2 billion to expand the output of artillery munitions in the U.S. The construction of new production lines and modernization of old ones in factories like Pennsylvania’s Scranton Army Munitions Plant will revive the U.S. ability to produce enough munitions to sustain future long, high-intensity wars waged by itself or its partners.

Beyond the 155 mm artillery, the war in Ukraine has led Lockheed Martin to invest in doubling the production of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) from 48 to 90 units per year in its factory in Camden, Arkansas. The plant plans to hire 20% more workers over the next several years to further expand the production of weapons for Ukraine.

The Camden factory also produces Javelin man-portable systems, which have helped Ukrainians destroy Russian armored columns. After multiple Ukraine-related orders from the Pentagon, production of Javelin missiles is planned to expand from 2,100 to 4,000 units per year. Another $340 million order from the Pentagon led Raytheon to restart the previously discontinued production of Stingers, another man-portable system widely used by the Ukrainian military to shoot down Russian aircraft.

If the U.S. stops providing military aid to Ukraine, some of these changes could be reversed or slowed down. The Pentagon’s acquisition chief Bill LaPlante said last year, “This has traditionally been something that is feast or famine. We go into panic mode, we increase production, and then when the crisis is passed, we just go back to minimal production again.”

Ukraine is a field lab for U.S. weapons
The war in Ukraine acts as a testing program for experimental U.S. weapons systems, permitting the U.S. military to observe their performance in a large, high-intensity war. U.S. drones, such as Anduril Industries’ Altius 600M, AeroVironment’s Switchblade, and Aevex Aerospace’s Phoenix Ghost, were used on a large scale in Ukraine for the first time. Anduril’s founder, Palmer Luckey, highlighted the speed of learning from the war, “as the Russians change their tactics and their systems, we’re able to push software changes to our platforms that change their capabilities.” AeroVironment’s CEO Wahid Nawabi likewise labeled the war in Ukraine an “inflection” point. The firm has already used lessons from Ukraine to develop an upgraded version of Switchblades.

Supplying the Ukrainian military has also allowed U.S. companies to develop totally new systems, such as Boeing’s Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), and put them to use right after production, accelerating the military learning and adaptation process.

U.S. defense startups have been especially rapid in developing and testing new technology. From drone swarms and commercial satellites to anti-drone jamming and real-time A.I. targeting, the war in Ukraine has spurred major innovations in defense space.

Ukraine also enables U.S. military planners to refine their understanding of how older systems, such as HIMARS and Bradleys, perform in a large-scale modern war against a peer adversary. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the last time U.S. weapons were used to fight a significant conventional force. Warfare has changed over the last 20 years. Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that with the war in Ukraine, “we are witnessing the ways wars will be fought, and won, for years to come.”

Ukraine is a catalyst of U.S. institutional improvement

As modern technologies make the battlefield ever more mobile and complex, defense institutions must keep up. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the U.S. had not mobilized its military production to surge levels since the Vietnam War. Practices on both the public and private sides had grown rusty. If the U.S. is to succeed in a large war against a peer competitor, its institutions urgently need an update.

The Pentagon has already learned how to adapt COVID-era mass production techniques to the military sector, expediting contracts to restock Stingers and Javelins and provide Ukraine with modern National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS). The military’s new procurement authorities, such as multi-year contracts, enable it to accelerate the refill of its dwindling stockpiles. The Pentagon is also learning how to build industrial partnerships with foreign nations to develop, produce, and procure weapons with the urgency demands.

Ukraine has also revealed potential bottlenecks producers might experience if the U.S. were to enter a large-scale war, from difficulties with attracting a high-skilled workforce to the shortage of intermediate inputs. Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle state that the war in Ukraine showed the U.S. lacked adequate surge capacity for a major war, inducing Congress to fund the recovery of the upscaling capacity.

Because of Ukraine, the Pentagon has also removed barriers in its commercial partnerships. The U.S. European Command, the command structure responsible for U.S. military operations in the European theater, has rapidly expanded its use of commercial satellite imagery to provide Ukraine with intelligence. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that the conflict is already driving the DOD to consider how to better integrate commercial systems beyond Ukraine.

Lessons from the Ukrainian experiences, such as improved rules for intelligence sharing, will be vital in a Taiwan contingency. The U.S. would face the same hurdles with the Taiwanese as it does with the Ukrainians, as neither is a formal U.S. ally.

If not for the continuing U.S. support for Ukraine, a sense of urgency and an impetus for reforms would fade away. Government bureaucracies, set up to be ponderous, tend to resist major changes unless forced by circumstance. The Pentagon had discarded any integration with private satellite intelligence firms before the war in Ukraine and was slower in developing industrial partnerships with allied countries. Before the war, Congress kept refusing to permit multi-year procurement of munitions and begrudgingly granted this authority last December only for a limited scope of contracts. Even though institutional transformations are already underway, their continuation without potent external stimuli is not a given.

Numbers still count. The U.S. improves its own security not only by turning back Russia’s aggression, but by sharpening its ability to make weapons swiftly and to streamline production. This will give the U.S. a sorely needed edge over its enemies, many of whom have not seen large wars for decades.