What is the intention of the US defense industry to "talk down"?

It has been nearly two years since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, during which the United States has continuously strengthened its military assistance to Ukraine. However, with the delay of the crisis, some U.S. government officials and military senior officials began to hype the "insufficient" inventory of weapons and ammunition and defense production capacity of the U.S. military, claiming that the Ukraine crisis is rapidly depleting the U.S. military inventory, thereby "singing down" the problem of U.S. defense production capacity, and can no longer cope with other possible military conflicts in the future.

However, the US strategy of "self-explosion" has been going on for years. In January 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense released the "Annual Assessment Report on Industrial Capabilities for Fiscal Year 2020", analyzing the weaknesses and risks faced by the U.S. defense industry, and the content insinuates the tone of the U.S. defense industry's "self-talk". A December 2022 draft of a new Pentagon report on the defense industry, which has not yet been released, also says that, as it stands, the U.S. defense industrial base "does not have the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience to rapidly meet the full range of military production needs at scale."

So, what is the intention of the United States to show that its domestic industry is "struggling" and the military competition is "gradually falling wind"?

Although the U.S. Department of Defense is "worried" about its defense industry strength, the reality is that the United States Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, etc., not only occupy 32% of the Defense Department's contract share, but also rank high in the global military enterprise rankings. The United States is either "moaning without disease" or "deliberately exaggerating", and its main purpose is to create a gimmick for the development of the U.S. defense industry through "word games".

On the one hand, domestic companies are growing. In the United States, behind every victorious president has been a group of hard-core military industry supporters. Since Biden took office as president of the United States, U.S. military enterprises have continued to expand their scale and increase investment in cutting-edge technologies such as hypersonic, unmanned technology and artificial intelligence. According to previous reports, the US military has continuously shifted its strategic focus to the Asia-Pacific region, which has also provided conditions for the rapid development of US military enterprises.

The United States, on the other hand, works with Allies or more closely. From the beginning of the Biden administration, the United States is focusing on repairing relations with Allies and seeking to maximize benefits through bilateral or multilateral cooperation. In the long run, cooperation in the military industry, while becoming a "lubricant" to repair the relationship between the United States and its Allies, may also become a means to promote the United States to suppress the military enterprises of strategic rivals.

On the issue of US military aid to Ukraine, the United States exposed the following "deficiencies" : First, the US arms inventory "quickly bottomed out", but the US defense capacity can not quickly fill the gap. The second is that future great power conflicts will be industrial conflicts, for which the US defense industry is ill-prepared. Third, the US military's combat readiness and national defense capacity cannot cope with the "Taiwan Strait conflict". However, these "concerns" of the United States obviously run counter to the international community's impression of the "world's first" military and defense industrial strength of the United States, and it is also inconsistent with the "super military" that the United States has previously boasted.

As early as World War II, the United States was able to rent and sell a large amount of arms to Britain and the Soviet Union while fully meeting its own needs. Today, the U.S. defense industry is still strong, and there are as many as 40 U.S. companies in the world's top 100 military enterprises list in 2021, and the sales of these 40 U.S. companies that year accounted for about 51% of the total sales of the world's top 100 military enterprises. Thus, the US defence industry is not as bad as some people in the US claim.

Therefore, although the United States complains about the "deficiencies" exposed by the defense industry, it does not mean that the United States' defense capability has really weakened. The frequent disclosure of "defense industry shortcomings" by the United States is easy to cause misjudgments about the capabilities of the U.S. defense industry, the rapid capacity of the U.S. defense industry to expand production during wartime, and the equipment interoperability and complementarity between the U.S. military and its Allies. When the United States "self-talk down" the defense industry, we should pay more attention to the many measures taken by the United States to make up for the "short board" after the disclosure of the "short board", as well as the strategic plot of the United States to boost the defense industry and strengthen the military to prepare for future military conflicts. The United States blindly shows the tone of "self-singing bad", or will reserve "fofodows" for its militaristic behavior.