Artificial Intelligence Nov. 25, 2025

The AI Fault Line: Driving Military Power and Shaping Global Order

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum technologies are rapidly transforming the character of warfare and the foundations of international power. This paper contends that the United States (U.S.) faces an urgent imperative: preserve its military-technological edge not only through AI superiority but also through institutional transformation, innovation surges, and strengthened international partnerships. Strategic competitors—especially China—are aggressively investing in AI and quantum computing with the intent to outpace U.S. capabilities, reshape global norms, and erode American deterrence.

Electromagnetic Warfare Oct. 28, 2025

Electromagnetic Warfare

The United States faces a critical inflection point in the fight for electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) superiority. Historically treated as a supporting function, Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) is now a decisive warfighting capability. Adversaries like China and Russia have prioritized non-kinetic spectrum dominance, challenging decades of U.S. superiority. Without control of the EMS, precision capabilities fail, Joint operations falter, and deterrence erodes. U.S. policies, industrial base practices, and acquisition systems have not adapted at the pace of adversaries’ integrated strategies. Regaining EMS superiority requires urgent, unified action across DoD, industry, and international partners.

Maritime (Formerly Shipbuilding and Maritime Domain) Oct. 28, 2025

All Ahead Full: Revitalizing the U.S. Maritime Industrial Base

2025 Antonelli Award Winner-The United States has long depended on maritime power to safeguard national interests, drive economic growth, and maintain global influence. Central to this capability is the Maritime Industrial Base, a complex ecosystem of domestic and international shipbuilders supporting both U.S. commercial and defense needs. Today, the United States faces a critical choice regarding the future of its Maritime Industrial Base: whether to actively revitalize it or let market forces determine its future. The People’s Republic of China, the U.S.’s primary strategic competitor, has rapidly emerged as the world’s leading maritime power, producing over half of global commercial vessels and fielding a naval fleet larger than America’s. This underscores the urgent need to revitalize a U.S. Maritime Industrial Base weakened by decades of underinvestment and wavering national focus, undermining the nation’s ability to respond to emerging threats, build and sustain its fleet, and advance broader economic and national security objectives.

Aircraft (Formerly Air Domain) Oct. 17, 2025

Reforging the U.S. Aircraft Industrial Base

The U.S. Aircraft Industrial Base (AIB) stands at a critical inflection point. As strategic competition intensifies, particularly with China, America’s ability to project airpower and maintain deterrence will depend on the health and resilience of the AIB. While the Department of Defense’s 2023 National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) and its 2025 Implementation Plan (NDIS-IP) chart an ambitious course for revitalizing the broader defense industrial base, they devote limited attention to the aircraft sector. This paper bridges that gap by assessing the strengths and vulnerabilities of the AIB and offering recommendations to apply, supplement, or complement the implementation initiatives identified in the NDIS-IP in ways that will make the aircraft industry more robust and resilient.

Biortechnology Oct. 17, 2025

Fueling the Frontline: How Federal Investment Powers U.S. Biopharmaceutical Innovation

Biotechnology is no longer just a driver of health innovation; it is a strategic asset at the core of U.S. national security and economic power. Within this landscape, the biopharmaceutical industry anchors America’s innovation ecosystem, producing lifesaving therapies, enabling crisis response, and sustaining high-value employment. At the center of this success lies public investment, particularly through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds the foundational research that catalyzes scientific discovery, enabling the private sector to develop the transformative biopharmaceuticals that save lives.

Information and Cyberspace (Formerly Cyber) Oct. 3, 2025

The Cyber Imperative: How Bureaucracy and Inertia Threaten America's Cyber Edge

To maintain national security in a complex information and cyberspace landscape, the United States must execute decisive policy reforms that invest in innovative technologies, build digital supply chain resilience, develop the cyber workforce, and secure the advantage in the information domain. Unless the United States radically changes its approach through bold policy reform, it risks ceding the digital battlespace entirely.

Organic Industrial Base (OIB) Oct. 3, 2025

Forward Sustainment for Future Conflict: Designing a Resilient, Digitally Enabled Maintenance and Repair Enterprise for Indo-Pacific Conflict Scenarios

Recent policy signals underscore this urgency. The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) calls for resilient logistics networks and a robust industrial base. The FY22 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) promotes sustainment transparency and acquisition reform. Executive Orders 14265, 14267, 14268, 14269, and 14278 emphasize innovation, skilled labor, allied cooperation, maritime revitalization, and regulatory streamlining. These directives make clear that sustainment modernization is now a national priority

C4ISR Industry Study Sept. 29, 2025

Bytes Before Bullets: Forging a Coherent and Interoperable C4ISR Ecosystem

In the 21st-century armed conflict, strategic battlespace advantage increasingly belongs to the belligerent who can control and exploit the flow of digital information. That strategic battlespace is rapidly shifting. Russia’s use of electronic warfare and drone-enabled rapid targeting in Ukraine and China’s pursuit of “intelligentized” warfare through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and integrated data systems exemplify how adversaries are adapting faster than traditional acquisition timelines allow. U.S. operations in the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific also reveal persistent shortcomings in joint and coalition interoperability, bandwidth constraints, and vulnerable space-based infrastructure. These trends underscore the need for a Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) posture that is not only technologically advanced but resilient, agile, and designed from the outset for allied collaboration.

Space Sept. 29, 2025

The Next High Ground: An Integrated Approach to U.S. Leadership in Cislunar Space

The United States faces a strategic inflection point: it must act decisively to secure the cislunar domain—the region of space between geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and the Moon—or risk ceding this critical high ground to global competitors like China and Russia. As space becomes increasingly commercialized and contested, a deliberate U.S. strategy is essential to preserve freedom of maneuver, enable economic expansion, and set the normative foundations for responsible behavior beyond Earth orbit.

Autonomous Systems and Robotics (Formerly Robotics) Sept. 25, 2025

Autonomy & Robotics at the Crossroads Policy Recommendations to Secure a Strategic Advantage

The Autonomous Systems & Robotics (AS&R) industry is increasingly consequential to national defense and economic competition. This research examines the current structure and challenges of the AS&R sector through Porter’s Five Forces, while drawing from extensive research, field studies, and comparisons with partner nations. While the U.S. continues to lead in several areas of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) development, the U.S. Defense Industrial Base (DIB) faces numerous limitations, many of which stem from outdated policy frameworks, rigid acquisition models, and dependence on foreign suppliers. To outpace China, the DoD must secure supply chains and standardize autonomy to ensure AS&R systems are interoperable, scalable, and field-ready.