Articles
6 Reasons to Lean Into Defense Work
By Bart Taylor, GHMA
The DoW push to rebuild the defense industrial base (DIB) hopes to reverse a trend that's left the DIB short of thousands of suppliers.
But things change. And the intentions of a newly rebranded defense establishment to rebuild the defense ecosystem (we wrote about it here) hold promise.
That said, what's different this time? How will DoW's new DIB strategy attract people and companies, and why should small manufacturers lean into defense?
I posed the question to Michael Gilroy, Vice President, Workforce for the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC), who built the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program and the Industry Resilience Program at the Office of the Secretary of Defense before moving to CREC.
Gilroy's optimistic about success. Here's why: (Following is my bulleted summary of the highlights from a very informative conversation.)
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The Threat
There's no confusion today about America's primary foe. “China is the pacing threat, and that isn't a controversial statement anymore,” Gilroy says. “I went to the Naval War College in 1998, and every year they play a war game called ‘Global.’ That year Global was a China scenario, a Taiwan Strait scenario. So this has been going on for 30 years.”
Much has changed — but what hasn't, according to many, is a focus on 2027. Gilroy mentioned the “Davidson Window,” coined after Admiral Philip Davidson told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2021 that China could move on Taiwan within six years, a forecast some believe later comments from Chinese President Xi Jinping have affirmed.
True or not, China 2027 is today providing clarity — and motivation for the DoW.
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Speed and leadership change
Gilroy points to two leaders who came up through business rather than government. Emil Michael was Chief Business Officer at Uber before becoming Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering. Michael Cadenazzi, now Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, spent ten years as a Navy cryptologic warfare officer and then two decades launching small defense companies, selling two of them.
“Both of them measure a program by how fast it delivers and what it has delivered lately,” Gilroy says. “Suppliers should expect to get measured the same way. The man writing industrial base policy has made payroll in this sector.”
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Munitions as a motivator
“We gave the Ukrainians a great deal of our 155 mm artillery ammunition, and then here comes the Iran war, and now we have to replenish,” Gilroy observes. “Replenishment means orders, and munitions orders run down through castings, forgings, energetics, machining and packaging — which is where a lot of Gulf Coast shops already work. That's a demand signal you can plan against.”
It's also the demand that keeps 2027 in front of Pentagon planners.
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Funding. Lots of it.
Gilroy points to the head-spinning change since the administration took office — from deep budget cuts and survival mode to a war-footing posture flush with funding.
“The money didn't disappear, it got repositioned,” he says. “Most of it landed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also called the Reconciliation Bill — about $152 billion for defense, and the Department has said it intends to obligate all of it in a single year. That money becomes real on October 1.”
“On top of that, the FY27 budget request the White House announced in January is $1.5 trillion. Congress won't appropriate all of it, but even a share of that is a lot of money.”
Gilroy doesn't see the pile diminishing, regardless of the midterm elections. “Even if control of the House changes, these programs can't be turned off immediately,” he says, estimating the current flush of defense funding lasting through 2031.
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New entrants tipping over convention
I wrote last time about the push in DoW to add a cadre of so-called “neo-primes” — including Saronic Technologies, whose $3.2 billion “Port Alpha” autonomous shipyard is headed for the Port of Brownsville. Gilroy mentioned the same. “Look at what's going on with companies that have never been in defense before, like Anduril and Saronic. They were nobody three years ago,” he says.
“Anduril went from a clean sheet to first flight of an autonomous fighter drone in 556 days, and that aircraft has since carried weapons. Saronic went from startup to vessels in active operations in about four years,” Gilroy explains. “That's the pace it moves at now. A program written on a twenty-year cycle isn't going to hit it, and that has more to do with how the programs were built than with the companies running them.”
If the plan is to lean on neo-primes to change the procurement culture, it's off to a good start.
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There seem to be more practical entry points for small manufacturers
Navigating Defense is still a challenge, but Gilroy's recommendations are straightforward. If you haven't, join the Defense Industrial Base Consortium. “DIBC is the big funnel,” he says. “It's organized around the critical subsectors — kinetic capabilities, microelectronics, strategic and critical materials, castings and forgings. You might say, ‘look, I don't need this, all I do is castings and forgings.' There's a door there too. Pick the one that fits, so you get notice of what's coming down the pike and you can collaborate with people who look like you.”
“Also, have your members join the National Defense Industrial Association — NDIA. You have a chapter in Houston. Go to those meetings so you can get some kind of advance intelligence. And then every year, go to the Defense Manufacturing Conference, which they usually run in November or December.”
There's more — a lot more. We'll dig deeper into potential routes for small manufacturers and other suppliers from Houston's rich industrial base, at the GHMA Lunch & Learn on DIB expansion at Greater Houston Partnership, Thursday Sept. 24.
Bart Taylor is president of the Greater Houston Manufacturers Association. Reach him at [email protected].
