Summary and Key Points: Top U.S. military commanders express urgent concern over rapidly expanding Russian and Chinese military-industrial capabilities. Russia, despite heavy losses in Ukraine, is rebuilding combat systems swiftly, outproducing Western arsenals significantly.
-Concurrently, China’s naval expansion far outpaces U.S. capabilities, boasting vastly superior shipbuilding infrastructure.
-Both nations have harnessed economies on wartime footing, vastly increasing defense budgets and military production capacity.
-Simultaneously, Iran and North Korea bolster military supplies, heightening strategic worries.
-With America’s defense spending declining and its military-industrial base needing rejuvenation, U.S. leaders seek urgent bipartisan investment to enhance military readiness, modernize capabilities, and maintain deterrence against growing threats from powerful adversaries.
America Falling Behind? How Russia and China Are Outproducing U.S. Defense
Washington has been put on notice as America’s top military commanders for Europe and Asia are ringing the alarm bells with eerily similar themes confronting both gentlemen.
Russian ground forces in Ukraine have lost “an estimated 3,000 tanks, 9,000 armored vehicles, 13,000 artillery systems, and over 400 air defense systems in the past year—but is on pace to replace them all.”
Mother Russia is not just reconstituting and growing its active duty forces but also building combat vehicles and munitions at “an unprecedented pace,” according to the testimony of the U.S. military’s European command chief, General Christopher Cavoli, before Congress.
The Army general outlined Russia’s methodical nationwide expansion of military industrial production through the opening of new manufacturing facilities and the conversion of commercial production lines for military purposes. The result is a reinvigorated Russian defense industrial base that is expected to roll out 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles, and 200 Iskander ballistic and cruise missiles this year. By comparison, the U.S. constructs just 135 tanks per year and no longer builds new Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
Beyond equipment, Russia has vastly expanded its munitions production. The U.S. European Command estimates Russia can produce 250,000 artillery shells per month, which puts it on track to build a stockpile three times greater than the U.S. and Europe combined.
How is Putin achieving all this in short order? According to Cavoli, Russia’s economy is on a “war footing” and “will remain so for the foreseeable future.”
The Kremlin has “established economic policies to restructure its financial institutions and defense industry.” This past autumn, Russia announced a 25 percent increase in defense spending, representing over 6 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By some estimates, this means Russia is spending more on its military than all of Europe combined.
This is the fourth straight year Russia has raised defense spending to fund its war in Ukraine, expand its active forces, and resource long-term military plans.
Russia’s military is also busy implementing rapid cycles of tech adaptation while developing new capabilities to accelerate force modernization. Russian forces have employed new, domestically produced electronic countermeasures against Ukrainian jamming technology to improve strike efficacy. Meanwhile, Russia’s army is integrating reconnaissance and one-way attack drones into their battlefield offensives to great success.
Russia’s rapid munitions production trajectory is worrisome on its own but even more troubling given what the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific command chief warned late last year was his concern about dwindling stocks of precision weapons and missiles. Calling China the “most capable potential adversary in the world,” Admiral Samuel Paparo urged straight talk and highlighted the worrisome lack of American military magazine depth.
While Beijing has thus far avoided becoming entangled in a hot war like Moscow, China’s industry is ready to support war if needed. China has been investing heavily into its shipbuilding industry with tangible benefits.
Intelligence estimates indicate that China now has 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of the U.S.—China can now build more warships in a month than the U.S. can in a year. China’s robust dual-use maritime industry is primed to build and repair ships at a wartime tempo, while the U.S. industry is in decline. In a drawn-out conflict, China would have the clear advantage in building, repairing, and maintaining warships at sea.
Shipbuilding is only one area where China has started to pull ahead of the U.S. in national security. China now fields not only the world’s largest navy, but also the world’s largest army, air force, and strategic rocket force. Beijing’s strategy of military-civil fusion has guaranteed that China’s industries are subservient and available in dual-use capacity for military use.
Similarly, Beijing has accomplished this by supplying its military with year-after-year of real budgetary growth. Over the past 28 years, China’s defense budget has seen a consistent average increase of about 9 percent annually. Deeper analysis shows China’s true military spending is far higher than reported. AEI estimates it reached at least $711 billion in 2022, or 96 percent of the Pentagon’s budget that year.
Between the growing military might of Russia and China, no combatant commander is resting easy these days. But the buildup doesn’t stop there. Iran has dramatically increased drone and missile production, supplying Russia with thousands of systems while scaling its own capabilities for regional power projection. North Korea is now a critical supplier of artillery to Moscow, drawing from deep stockpiles and revitalized factories long-geared for war. These partnerships are accelerating the military-industrial expansion of each regime, forming a resilient Axis of Arms Production that threatens to outpace U.S. and allied arsenals.
Russian Artillery 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV.
The U.S. defense budget fell in real terms last year and represents just three percent of our economy, the lowest proportion since the end of the Cold War. The Pentagon has said the effort to reinvigorate America’s shipbuilding, aerospace, and defense industrial base has only just begun and will take years to correct what took decades of underinvestment to manifest.
There is no escaping the fact that more money is required to strengthen and broaden American industry, which is one reason why Congress is trying to pass a financial shot in the defense arm through a budget reconciliation bill. The multiyear funds are intended to bolster ten lines of effort, including shipbuilding, Golden Dome, munitions, Air Force inventories, space assets, additional investments in the Indo-Pacific region, innovation at scale, and more funds for the border and defense audit.
M109 firing. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Similarly, the Secretary of Defense has been scrubbing defense plans in order to reinvest in 17 capability areas spanning from the nuclear triad to missile defense, one-way attack and autonomous drones and collaborative combat aircraft, munitions, shipbuilding, and health care. This effort tracks with the unfunded priorities list for Indo-Pacific Command, which includes requests for precision strike stand-off weapons and missiles, military construction, a variety of maritime mines, space sensors, undersea surveillance systems, and much more.
The good news is that both the legislative and executive branches agree: the U.S. must invest in targeted military capabilities to get results now. There is bipartisan recognition that we need to bolster deterrence, modernize the armed forces, and rebuild the workforce, facilities, and supply chains that underpin our defense industrial base. America’s adversaries aren’t waiting, and neither should we. These investments take years to deliver. The sooner Washington moves from plans to production, the sooner the military can rebuild its arsenal, restore deterrence, and ensure America is never outmatched.
About the Author: Mackenzie Eaglen
Now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security.
RequestBeingVerified
April 8, 2025 at 12:39 pm
Full of innuendoes.
America, or the USA, is the top predatory entity in the world today and russia and china and other nations are merely doing the minimum to maintain a certain low to mid-level of self-preservation.
China allegedly has 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of uncle sam but it’s building the wrong kinds of vessels.
It’s largely building commercial ships or ships that could potentially serve as easy practice targets for US navy and air force.
Countries like russia and china need only to take a quick look at gaza and understand what’s coming next.
The US generals and admirals of today view other countries with the same lens as the one used by US marshals on the natives in the Indian wars.
Thus, for russia and china, no arsenal is too big to have today as they silently await what’s coming to them tomorrow.
Jim
April 8, 2025 at 12:43 pm
The problem with ideological war supporters is every problem is a nail (needs a military solution) and all they have is a hammer (military action).
They ignore their failures, both military (their preferred policy) and the absence of diplomacy, entirely, or insufficient, even unprofessional efforts at diplomacy.
The current crop of supposed “analysts” on military-foreign affairs have “grown up” or matured in a climate of Full-Spectrum Dominance foreign policy which has failed to serve the national interest of the American People.
That being said, Russia & China have reacted to United States military-foreign policies by building up their own military capacity.
Given the current direction of events where the warhawks want to increase military spending: the self-licking ice cream cone is in effect… produce military tension (on purpose, but claim their adversaries are the real cause of the tension) then claim there is no choice, but to increase military spending (their desired result) to counter the adversary’s buildup.
And, if they have their way this cycle will never end… they know no other way… but war.
And, never take responsibility for the policies which force China and Russia to increase military spending and work more closely together on geopolitical matters than was imagined possible by many foreign policy analysts just a few short years ago.
What we need is to reduce the mission scope of the military from Full-Spectrum Dominance to a balancing role along with market-maker status in as many economic arenas as possible.
The attempt at Military dominance of the entire planet has squandered our vast wealth, both economical and the soft-power of international good will.
Look at what caused our opponents’ military buildups.
(Look in the mirror at our own failures and bad policy choices.)
… ah, but that would turn the spotlight on our many failures in geopolitics as a direct result of the current crop of so-called “analysts,” who are really just lobbyists for the Military-Industrial Complex… looking to fill their rice bowl in Washington City.
Swamplaw Yankee
April 9, 2025 at 2:10 am
The above is a wonderful gaming field. The general public now has to out-collect, out-process and out-think the treason bubbling inside tax funded intelligence structures.
Classic ideological war supporters were often Genetic driven, but now the peer observer has to closely examine the tripocracy emitted by most intelligence structures ( public or private). The above 2 power structures the article quickly scurries over, well, they have genetic, not ideological, architecture.
So, a Yankee Doodle just can not slip into a secret stealing adventure in Han territory. Very few Yankee Doodle can slip into a generic Russia.
For example: Many top secret underground nuclear orc military facilities were erected in Ukraine/Poland soil near the border. The orc muscovite military staff: all scrutinized backwards for 2 0r 3 Russian generations. Not one f–king Ukrainian + Mongolian military was even allowed past the fencing.
The current Putin muscovite elite filtered back genetically to proof that the Russian ancestors ran caravans into Ukraine for lucrative sex trade kidnapping of Ukrainians. Or, maybe the current orc muscovite trolls in 1945 comments wish to deny that and, claim what? That the orc muscovite elite military trusted the Ukrainian or any Mongolian captive nation with access to the nuclear materials.
Meanwhile, the Yankee empire in competition with the slave sex trade empire openly claims all sorts of WOKE, DEI fantasies exclusive to themselves, makes the Yankee empire superior to the genetic empires of the Han + Russian peasant model.
As Byron, or the above commenter ask, where are the fact origins and why the innuendo?
Today, suddenly Ukraine outbuilds many sovereign states in a military hardware sense. The Ukrainian people always out built the orc muscovite elite.
Any genetic race spy can steal anything located inside the USA. For example, Pressed metal technology, sold by 3 Yankee traitors for a few pennies to the Han empire. Penalty, the USA MSM refused to front page + carry this news item of national betrayal! Today, the 3 traitors seem to live better on their theft funds from the Han. The real question: how much did the Han charge the orc muscovite elite for these bought Yankee tech secrets? That NYT best seller book seems to be still unpublished.
The snoring inner beltway no longer has the brave Canadian Anglo-Saxon/Francophone/Ukrainian north to defend the coward snoring period. The yelloooou Belliiie Yankee ruled supreme for 3 years in 1939-1940-1941. The was 3 years to prepare the USA industrial complex. Does any data support that? The USA industrial giants borrowed all needed technology from the busy Canadian industrial complex. Canadian lads and ladies died and were maimed until the allies top hero, the Japanese Emperor gave his own green light on Dec 7, 1941 for his boys to bring honour back to the yelloooou cowards. The problem: the Canadian lads had to look their southern cowards straight in their cowards face, be courteous, polite and effacing while truthfully boiling to the eruption point.
The USA has no periodicity of warning in 2025. The tax money is funded + spent now! If not, the chief magistrate has abdicated the Yankee Doodle hoi poloi to the genetic empires.
Chuck Devore offers us a speculative tid bit. De Vore has facts that 200,000 to 400,ooo Han military men were paid for, to the Bidens, by the Han regime. The Biden machine collected. Han genetic units slipped into the USA for years, all ready for the coming Sabotage signal from their fatherland.
DeVore correctly identified that Canada was a loser. The Democrat types in Canada spent huge cash on WOKE, DEI and the CBC. The new fella has already thrown in with the genetic empires. The new fella promises to double tax payments for next year to the CBC to supply agit prop to the lefty-pinkoe USA MSM. Remember, the fella up here will outlast the MAGA cabal by 3 years of total 100% power. 5% of GNP of Canada for military: the FSB cells in Canada that control the leftie-pinkoe cabals will never permit that concept. Remember the effective Putin FSB cover-up of data on the very public Muslim/Bin Ladin HQ in Toronto, that operated for so many years pre-organizing the 9-11 ka-boom.
Or, will Gabbard, the DNI et al, guarantee each + every month that Putin has no, that is zero, FSB operations in Canada!
DeVore identified that the Mexican cartel military is ready, militarilized with Han CCP funding. The CCP will never stop funding the free supply of drug pre-cursers of fentynyl to the cartels. De Vore claims intel that at a signal from the fatherland, hundreds of thousands of armed Cartel will attack/invade the USA southern border.
While the rich flee the states, the congress then starts to fund and order arms, asap, demanding delivery before the Mexicans reach Washington’s inner beltway aquarium.
Ad rem: when the signal is given, the arms are 100% ready for the Mexican Cartel structures. The Mexicans do start an order from the Han fatherland.
Yeah, the USA defence budget is in a rush to imitate the collapse of the Canadian military: just enough cash to barely caretake the 100 year old stone armouries. The USA decreases its GNP % while the inner beltway bad mouths a USA ally that is at 5%!! Poland!
The genetic Han can install Hunter Biden as a shill President! No problem. Hunter seems to have accepted the pre-payment for exactly what?
In 2013 the Democrat cabal, with a Obama mouthpiece, unilaterally gave the cold war prime enemy Putin a fee, no-cost giveaway, the ancient soil + home of Ukrainian families. Obama, et al, green lighted the attack on Ukraine of “little green groomers” and a Democrat promise not to interfere in the kidnapping of little Ukrainian girls and boys. In 2014 Putin was in ecstasy as the long suppressed genetic urge of the Russian peasant was released: Ukrainian children again can be harvested as ole grand pappy Putin did for eons back. Putin allocated his airplanes so the deviant russian peasants could ship the kidnapped concubines back to good ole Moscow/Saint Petersburg. The 2000 year old russian orc itch was satisfied. Obama was in political play! Putin and Epstein were good ole buddies in the trade.
In 2015 the Putin sex trade thrives, hardly referenced by an Epstein deprived MSM. The industrial complex needs to obtain answers exactly why the Democrats green lighted to the cold war enemy, the Putin sex trade in 2014. That perfectly high lights the treason of a unilateral type inner beltway. That seems so close to the May 7, 1999 USA bombing of the Han Belgrade embassy.
The French had bitter exchanges with Clinton about the USA treason, the Democrats going behind the allies backs.
That seems so close to the unilateral treason check out to the Taliban behind the legitimate Pashto peoples back. Now, the unilateral sell out to the ancient genociders by the USA behind the Ukrainian peoples back.
Who and when exactly ensured that the USA is now outmatched. This chief magistrate has clearly self-abdicated the leadership of the WEST. Is the germ of truth of this long processed abdication somewhere deep inside the inner beltway bowels? Do we all await the best seller Hollywood film of the abdication of the USA empire? Who will speak out?
There is no 3 year blab cushion for the 2025 era yelloooou bellliiiie Yankee. Canada of 1939 has vanished. Today, ask Mexico for your new blab cushion. We all are just so sure that the Mexican patriots will step in to help Yankee America + with so much more force and determination than the Canucks did in 1939. -30-