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Recent conflicts around the world are revealing a shift in the character of warfare. For decades, U.S. military power relied on precision and technological superiority. But increasingly, the decisive advantage is shifting toward something more basic: mass and speed of production. The side that can field capable systems in large numbers — and replace them quickly — has the upper hand.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the rapid rise of unmanned systems. The United States recently employed attack drones in combat for the first time, highlighting how quickly these technologies are becoming central to the future fight.
That reality raises a fundamental question for American policymakers and defense leaders: If modern warfare demands scale and speed, where will the United States build the industrial capacity to deliver it? The answer might be closer to home than many realize.
The United States has faced a similar moment before. In the years leading up to World War II, the country mobilized its industrial base at unprecedented speed. Cities like Detroit transformed into the “Arsenal of Democracy,” a term coined by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to refer to the manufacturing centers producing aircraft, tanks and vehicles at a scale the world had never seen.
That industrial surge helped the Allied Forces secure victory abroad but also solidified the Midwest as the backbone of American manufacturing.
Over the decades that followed, much of that production capacity moved overseas as American companies offshored manufacturing and foreign producers entered a globalized market. Entire communities across the region saw factories close and supply chains migrate elsewhere. The result was the economic story many came to call the “Rust Belt.”
But today’s geopolitical environment presents an opportunity to reverse that narrative.
As defense priorities shift toward resilient supply chains, rapid manufacturing and scalable production, the Midwest’s industrial strengths suddenly look less like history and more like strategic advantage.
According to the Aerospace Industries Association, Indiana’s aerospace and defense sector contributed nearly $6 billion to the state’s gross domestic product in 2023. And the Sagamore Institute reports that more than 61,000 Hoosiers already work in defense-related jobs across the state.
Those numbers tell an important story: The Midwest is not starting from scratch. The workforce, the manufacturing expertise and the industrial infrastructure are already here.
What’s emerging now is the innovation ecosystem needed to pair those strengths with next-generation defense technology.
Indiana is increasingly positioning itself as a hub for the development and testing of unmanned systems. Investments in drone testing infrastructure are creating the conditions for innovators, manufacturers and defense partners to collaborate in one place, moving technologies from concept to testing to production far more quickly.
In modern defense innovation, the speed at which a technological capability moves from prototype to fielded system can determine strategic advantage. Regions that can combine engineering talent, testing infrastructure, manufacturing capacity and supply chain access will shape the future of defense production.
The Midwest already has many of those ingredients. What it needs now is activation and investment.
That is precisely the conversation driving the Midwest Defense Innovation Summit — or MDIS — which the Applied Research Institute will host in April in Indianapolis. The summit will bring together defense leaders, technologists, manufacturers and investors from across the country to discuss how regions like the Midwest can accelerate the delivery of capability to the warfighter.
The goal is simple: Connect the innovation happening in America’s technology hubs with the manufacturing strength that has defined the Midwest for generations. Because if future conflicts are defined by the ability to produce systems at scale, the United States will need more than brilliant prototypes. It will need places that can build them quickly, reliably and in large numbers.
That is a role the Midwest has played before, and it is a role the Midwest can play again — in places like Indiana, where the workforce, the infrastructure and the industrial spirit are already waiting.•
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Kossack is CEO of the Applied Research Institute.
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