The Factory is The Weapon

Gregory Chassapis

Oct 9

6 min read

Spend enough time in Defense circles and you’ll probably hear the phrase, “The Factory is the Weapon."

When the United States officially entered World War II just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, its biggest contribution was hardly troop count. While it did possess capable soldiers and equipment, America's advantage was what it could manufacture, how quickly it could produce it, and how readily it could adapt to the demands of a changing battlefield.

In today's increasingly fragile geopolitical climate, the ability to manufacture is a strategic necessity, and the ability to produce the right things, in the right quantities, at the right time, may prove just as important as the products themselves.

On Deterrence

In the first 39 days of the ongoing war with Iran, the United States fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which is a weapon it procured in quantities below 100 per year on average since fiscal 2015. Even during times of peace, that quantity seems low given the nation’s global security responsibilities, but the real issue is the replacement timeline. In May of this year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated that American stockpiles of those missiles would not return to pre-war inventory levels until late 2030 (perhaps even early 2031), thanks to the rate at which they were used during the initial strikes on Iranian targets and an annual production capacity of 600 missiles per year. The same problem extends to other critical munitions families, including THAAD, Patriot, SM-3, SM-6, JASSM and PrSM, though the timelines differ.

The argument, of course, is that the country didn’t need those missiles because we were not otherwise engaged, but the math changes when a war breaks out since a conventional weapons plant can take time to reconfigure, particularly when the factory is suddenly required to triple output.

History shows us what that looks like: When Ford broke ground on the Willow Run bomber plant in 1941, the first B-24 did not come off the line until late 1942, and the plant finished only 56 that year. Cheekily, critics renamed the plant “Will It Run?” but by 1944, it was finishing a bomber every 63 minutes, which is the part of the story everyone remembers. Process those dates, however, and you’ll realize that it took three years to go from breaking ground to one bomber every 63 minutes. A modern conflict makes that timeline seem like an eternity.

The Age of Software

Software-defined manufacturing (SDM) is an attempt to accelerate that timeline. In essence, SDM brings machines, robotics, sensors, production data, and human operators into a connected system, coordinated by software that can adapt how a factory operates as products and demands change. Instead of building production around fixed equipment and processes designed for a single product, manufacturers can use software, simulation, and increasingly AI to reconfigure workflows, optimize output, and move more quickly from design to production. The ambition is to make the factory a flexible industrial platform that can be reconfigured through software wherever the machinery, materials, and qualified production processes allow to meet the set of demands.

None of this is theoretical.

In a factory bay in Torrance, California, the same metal printers that make suspension parts for a McLaren supercar also make airframes for cruise missiles, and nothing is retooled between the two jobs because the only thing that changes is the file. The company is Divergent, which began in 2014 building cars and now claims it took one missile from requirements to first flight in 71 days, illustrating how software-driven design and additive manufacturing may compress early development timelines. It will now be responsible for building the midbody structure of the Tomahawk for Raytheon, the very missile the Navy cannot replace fast enough, and it expects to bring a second factory online by year-end that is planned for 64 printers and up to 30,000 missile airframes a year.

Anduril began production at its Arsenal-1 plant in Ohio in March, three months ahead of its own target, and rolled out its first combat drone there in July, 18 months after announcing the site.

Hadrian, which raised $1.37 billion in August, sells what it calls factories as a service: automated plants run on its own software, which it says can train a technician in 30 days or less. One of them is being installed inside Lockheed Martin’s missile site in Grand Prairie, Texas, to raise output of Patriot and THAAD interceptor parts.

The model is now moving from missiles and drones to ships. On September 30, Saronic broke ground on Port Alpha, a software-defined shipyard on 835 acres at the Port of Brownsville, Texas, which is backed by more than $3 billion of private capital and is due to open in 2028 building autonomous and crewed vessels, beginning with landing craft for the Navy. A week later, on October 6, Anduril and the White House announced Arsenal-2, a two-million-square-foot software-defined shipyard near Baltimore that will make components for Virginia-class attack submarines, starting with torpedo tubes. Anduril is committing $3.7 billion of its own capital and the Navy up to $2.9 billion in purchases, with operations expected around 2030.

The Race America Can Win

According to the International Federation of Robotics, China installed 295,000 industrial robots in 2024 (approx. 54% of the world total), while the United States installed 34,200. But the number of machines is only one measure of industrial capacity. The United States continues to lead in AI/software and has an opportunity to compete on how effectively software, AI and flexible manufacturing systems turn equipment, engineering expertise, and raw materials into usable output. Whether that opportunity becomes a strategic advantage will depend on how quickly these technologies can be deployed at scale, which changes the price of mass.

The low-cost missiles that Divergent’s airframes go into cost a fraction of what legacy designs cost and can be produced in quantities old production lines could never deliver. Furthermore, because some of these manufacturing systems can be deployed in smaller facilities, production capacity may be distributed across more locations, reducing dependence on a single plant. The strategic benefit will depend on whether the wider supply chain can support that distribution.

Caveats

Even so, a fast factory does not automatically make a fast defense industrial base. Every new component must be qualified, and suppliers must be vetted and approved before their products can be incorporated into military systems. These processes exist for good reason, but they take time. Yes, Washington has taken steps to accelerate defense procurement, including provisions considered in the fiscal 2026 defense legislation related to the FORGED Act, but the challenge is translating those reforms into faster contracts, qualified suppliers, and sustained production at scale to keep up with the speed of technological change.

Final Thoughts

Many of the figures cited above come from company projections that have yet to be demonstrated at full production scale. The Long Beach factory remains roughly two years from full capacity. Arsenal-1 has produced its first aircraft, but not yet a fleet. Port Alpha is not expected to open until 2028, while Arsenal-2 is not projected to begin operating until around 2030. The industrial base is changing, but the extent of that transformation remains to be proven.

For decades, the central question in defense was which weapon was best. Increasingly, the more consequential question is which country can adapt what it builds, scale production, and deliver new capabilities faster than its adversaries.

Missiles are expended, designs become obsolete, but the industrial capacity to turn a design into hardware, adapt it to new requirements, and produce it at scale retains strategic value beyond any individual project. The engineers who develop these systems and the workers who manufacture them are integral to military power, just as surely as the personnel who operate the equipment.

Seen this way, a factory is worth far more than the products it makes today. Its value lies in what it can produce tomorrow, and how quickly it can respond when the demands of national security change.

The factory is the weapon.

Sources

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