The FY27 NDAA: A Blueprint for Revitalizing America’s Arsenal of Freedom

Introduction

Over the course of 2025, the Trump Administration has focused on the need to reindustrialize and maintain dominance in the Western Hemisphere. These two efforts are emphasized in the 2025 National Security Strategy and are the core of an America First Strategy to secure the homeland and advance Americans’ needs abroad. The Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (FY27 NDAA) should not be viewed simply as a defense authorization bill, but as a blueprint for restoring America’s industrial strength, military readiness, and long-term strategic dominance. American power has never rested solely on advanced weapon systems or industrial might, but on the combination of the resources that the United States has and its ability to utilize them as tools to assert economic dominance.

Prior NDAAs built the policy framework, but the FY27 NDAA is where the physical rebuilding begins. Over the last 30 years, America’s defense industrial base (DIB) has atrophied to the point where it can no longer support warfighters in a sustained conflict. The FY27 NDAA answers that challenge directly, centered on revitalizing the DIB by expanding U.S. production capacity, unleashing private-sector investment, opening the door to new and innovative entrants, reducing needless regulations, and creating thousands of skilled jobs for Americans. The President’[AGF1] s FY27 budget request puts real numbers behind that commitment—a $756.8 billion investment in new defense capabilities that the Administration projects will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans.

This framework builds upon the America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) prior America First defense policy efforts, particularly those focused on our warfighters to ensure they are no longer subjected to misplaced priorities like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). DEI has damaged morale and distracted from the core mission of deterring our adversaries and, if necessary, being able to fight and win our Nation’s wars. The restoration of the warrior ethos across the Department of War (DOW) has refocused America’s military on readiness, lethality, recruiting, standards, and mission accomplishment. The next phase of this effort is ensuring the warfighter is fully equipped through a robust and capable industrial base.

Rebuilding the Nation’s DIB—the arsenal of freedom—requires the country to once again unite behind a common mission: supporting the warfighter. From manufacturers to innovators to workers across the American heartland, the DIB exists to ensure America’s servicemembers remain the best-equipped, most capable, and most lethal fighting force in the world.

The Nation and the globe have depended on the United States’ ability to produce and distribute the latest technology at speed and scale to deter adversaries and achieve military superiority on the battlefield. The United States cannot secure the homeland, protect freedom abroad, or maintain stability in the Western Hemisphere without a resilient DIB capable of supporting both innovation and mass production. At the center of the FY27 NDAA discussion is capacity—the ability to build, scale, mobilize, sustain, and surge the arsenal of freedom faster and better than our adversaries. Rebuilding the arsenal of freedom therefore means rebuilding America’s deterrence through workforce readiness, resilient supply chains, modernized acquisition systems, and balanced investments that ensure America can innovate, produce, and outpace adversaries at scale.

The urgency is reflected in the numbers: the Pentagon’s FY27 budget request increases missile procurement funding by 188%—from $24.4 billion in FY26 to $70.5 billion in FY27—a spike that experts acknowledge completely outstrips current industrial production capacity. As House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Mike Rogers has stated, “We no longer have the capacity to build the capability for the warfighter at scale and speed. In some cases, manufacturing capacity just doesn’t exist.” The FY27 NDAA can be an opportunity to close that gap, building directly on the executive actions that the Trump Administration has already taken to lay the groundwork: the January 2026 Executive Order “Prioritizing the Warfighter in Defense Contracting,” which prevents underperforming contractors from prioritizing stock buybacks over production capacity; the February 2026 “America First Arms Transfer Strategy,” which leverages foreign military sales to expand domestic industrial capacity; and the Department of War’s November 2025 Acquisition Transformation Strategy, which unified the arms transfer and security cooperation enterprise to strengthen the DIB and burden-sharing with allies. The FY27 NDAA represents the next phase—translating that executive foundation into legislative permanence and funded capacity.

Workforce Readiness: Rebuilding the Arsenal Starts with People

Core Objective

The FY27 NDAA could support a steady and ready workforce pipeline capable of sustaining long-term defense production, industrial mobilization, and military readiness. Rebuilding the arsenal of freedom begins on factory floors, shipyards, foundries, laboratories, and manufacturing communities across the American heartland. The DIB depends on a skilled American workforce capable of building, sustaining, modernizing, and scaling the systems that secure the homeland and maintain American dominance.

Considerations

• Expand skilled manufacturing and trade pathways tied to the DIB.
• Strengthen STEM, vocational, and defense-focused education programs.
• Build long-term talent pipelines supporting advanced manufacturing and emerging defense technologies.
• Support apprenticeships and workforce incentives across critical sectors through private and public-private partnerships:
  • Shipbuilding
  • Aerospace
  • Munitions production
  • Nuclear modernization
  • Microelectronics
  • Advanced manufacturing
• Sustain Defense Manufacturing Communities:
  • Reinforce industrial ecosystems and regional economies built around defense manufacturing and production.
  • Support long-term workforce stability in communities tied to strategic defense programs.
  • Expand industrial base resiliency through sustained investment in domestic production capacity.

Programs like the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider in Palmdale, California, demonstrate how major defense platforms sustain entire industrial ecosystems composed of businesses big and small that are comprised of engineers, machinists, suppliers, manufacturers, and skilled labor necessary to support our warfighters defending the homeland. These programs do more than build weapons systems; they sustain the communities, families, workforce pipelines, and manufacturing capacity that underpin American power.

The Palmdale ecosystem offers a concrete model for what that talent pipeline looks like in practice. For nearly two decades, Antelope Valley College (AVC) and Northrop Grumman have built one of the most effective community college-employer partnerships in the country, placing thousands of students directly into jobs at the Palmdale facility. The curriculum is developed by Northrop Grumman, approved by the Department of Education, and delivered on AVC’s campus. Northrop often requires that local applicants without prior experience graduate from AVC’s Aircraft Fabrication and Assembly program before they can be considered for a position. The broader partnership includes the City of Palmdale, Goodwill of Southern California, and Los Angeles County Workforce Development, forming a true public-private ecosystem built around the defense program itself. This is what a resilient, defense-anchored workforce pipeline looks like, and it could be a model for communities across the United States.

Strategic Importance

America cannot rebuild the arsenal of freedom without the workers capable of building it, as AFPI has previously demonstrated. Deterrence begins on the factory floor. The United States’ ability to outbuild, outproduce, and outpace adversaries depends on maintaining a workforce capable of sustaining industrial mobilization at speed and scale, and across a range of existing and emerging technologies. Workforce readiness is therefore not simply an economic issue—it is a national security imperative foundational to maintaining American dominance in the Western Hemisphere and deterring adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran.

While the current administration has opened new opportunities for American workers to enter high-demand occupations through low- or no-cost, short-term, industry-aligned programs using Workforce Pell Grants, many DIB employers still lack the financial incentive to offset the costs of starting or expanding Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs). The FY27 NDAA could include financial incentives to employers to take on new or additional registered apprentices in defense-related occupations, providing a reliable and proven method for filling unmet labor market needs.

Trusted Supply Chains: Economic Security is National Security

Core Objective

The FY27 NDAA could help sustain U.S. economic dominance and long-term strategic position in the Western Hemisphere by building secure, resilient, and trusted supply chains capable of maintaining and sustaining military readiness, industrial mobilization, and national security. Economic security is national security, and America’s national security depends on its ability to maintain the capacity to build, produce, and outpace adversaries at scale. Supply chain resilience is economic sovereignty in practice, and economic sovereignty is the prerequisite for everything else.

A nation that depends on adversaries for the inputs that power its military and economy is not truly sovereign. Rare earth minerals, microelectronics, and advanced manufacturing materials are not just supply chain issues—they are strategic vulnerabilities that adversaries can and will exploit. Reducing that dependence is not a question of trade policy. It is a national security imperative.

Trusted bilateral partnerships are one critical tool in that effort. A strong DIB cannot exist without partners built on intentional relationships rooted in shared values and mutual security interests from AUKUS Pillar II, which builds an interoperable ecosystem for defense technology sharing across hypersonics, AI, and autonomous systems, to the U.S.–Japan defense industrial partnership, particularly $550 billion in Japanese investment in strategic U.S. industries like shipbuilding and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) co-production. Partnerships do not replace, but rather supplement and fuel American industrial strength.

Considerations

• Reduce dependence on adversarial nations for defense-relevant manufacturing and technologically advanced inputs and industrial production.
• Expand trusted sourcing and industrial cooperation networks with allies and strategic partners rooted in shared economic and security interests.
• Strengthen near-shoring and allied production networks across key defense and industrial sectors.
• Increase resilience across critical supply chains and infrastructure systems, including:
  • Rare earth minerals
  • Microelectronics
  • Energetics
  • Critical infrastructure components
  • Advanced manufacturing inputs
  • Defense-relevant technologies and materials
• Invigorate industrial surge readiness, mobilization, and continuity planning for wartime and peacetime production environments.
• Strengthen industrial coordination and interoperability with trusted allies to reinforce production capacity, sustainment, and collective defense.
• Modernize and streamline defense partnership frameworks that allow trusted allies and partners to more rapidly procure and integrate American defense systems and technologies.
• Expand industrial base resiliency through sustained investment in domestic production capacity and trusted industrial partnerships.
• Strengthen and secure critical infrastructure systems necessary to sustain defense production, logistics, energy security, transportation networks, and industrial mobilization during periods of strategic competition and conflict.

Trusted industrial networks and strategic alliances do more than strengthen economic cooperation; they reinforce the industrial capacity necessary to sustain military readiness, strengthen deterrence, and outproduce adversaries over the long term. Strong alliances rooted in shared values and mutual security interests bolster both America’s DIB and the broader industrial ecosystems of trusted partners across the Western Hemisphere and beyond. These partnerships also strengthen the American economy by expanding domestic production, increasing industrial investment, and reinforcing the manufacturing base that underpins long-term American prosperity and an America First economic agenda.

Strategic Importance

The DIB depends on trusted supply chains, resilient production capacity, and secure industrial partnerships capable of supporting long-term sustainment and industrial mobilization. The FY27 NDAA includes multiyear procurement authority for 13 critical munitions systems, including those critical in Operation Epic Fury’s successes—including Patriot [AGF2] [IG3] PAC-3 interceptors, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) [AGF4] [IG5] interceptors, AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and Tomahawk cruise missiles—thereby sending a clear demand signal to industry that investment in domestic production capacity is foundational to deterring adversaries and anticipating tomorrow’s threats. It also expands eligible uses of the DIB F[AGF6] und to include biotechnology, biomanufacturing, private-sector shipyard infrastructure, and advanced microelectronics packaging.

Economic security, industrial strength, and military readiness are interconnected pillars of an America First national security strategy. Trusted supply chains, however, depend on more than partnerships and policy direction—they depend on contract vehicles and funding structures that allow industry to plan, invest, and scale. A partner willing to co-produce or near-shore capacity cannot commit to long-term investment without a demand signal backed by stable, accessible funding. The FY27 NDAA must ensure the financial architecture supports the industrial partnerships it is trying to build.

The Warfighter First: Reforming How America Builds and Buys

Core Objective

The purpose of the Defense Industrial Base is not to sustain bureaucratic practices, satisfy contracts, or protect legacy programs. Rather, it exists to equip, protect, and support the men and women defending the homeland, and every acquisition decision must be evaluated against that standard.

The Trump Administration has already put the warfighter first by eliminating DEI programs that damaged readiness, restoring the warrior ethos, and refocusing the Department of War on lethality, recruiting, standards,[AGF7] and mission accomplishment. The next step is to ensure that the warfighter is fully equipped. Every acquisition decision, every contract vehicle, and every procurement timeline must answer one question: “Does this get the right capability to the right warfighter on time?” Too often, the answer has been no—systems arrive late, don’t integrate with what’s already in the field, or are bought to satisfy a contract rather than a mission requirement. There is today both an opportunity and a need to finish what the Administration started, not by adding more process, but by ruthlessly aligning every acquisition decision to operational need and ensuring the arsenal of freedom actually reaches the warfighter who needs it.

Considerations

• Expand hybrid and flexible contracting authorities that accelerate technologies from prototype to operational deployment, reducing the time between production and fielding so capabilities reach the warfighter faster.
• Prioritize dual-use and commercial technology integration into defense procurement to rapidly deliver proven capabilities to operational environments rather than starting from scratch.
• Strengthen procurement strategies that reinforce domestic manufacturing and ensure warfighters receive the most effective, reliable, and mission-ready equipment—not just what is cheapest or most convenient to procure.
• Require acquisition programs to demonstrate operational integration with existing fielded systems before advancing to full-rate production—meaning new capabilities must connect to, not compete with, what warfighters already carry.
• Shift evaluation criteria from compliance and cost alone to operational effectiveness and warfighter utility, so what matters is whether it works in the field, not whether cost and schedule requirements were met.
• Expand small business and non-traditional defense company participation to break the cycle of buying from the same legacy contractors regardless of performance or operational relevance.
• Improve real-time feedback loops between operational units and acquisition leadership so procurement decisions reflect current battlefield conditions, not requirements written years earlier.
• Consolidate the Department’s contracting and acquisition offices across the services to eliminate duplication, competing procurement authorities, and the fragmentation that drives fraud, waste, and abuse. A unified acquisition structure is not just a readiness imperative—it is a fiscal one.

America’s acquisition system should not simply manage contracts or funding; it should rapidly connect innovation, manufacturing, and production capacity to the warfighter. From small manufacturers supplying mission-critical components to major defense programs, the greater acquisition ecosystem should ensure America’s servicemembers remain the best-equipped, most capable, and most lethal fighting force in the world.

Strategic Importance

The next phase of acquisition modernization can focus on execution, production scalability, and strengthening the contractual ecosystems that rapidly connect innovation and manufacturing to the warfighter. Space Systems Command offers a concrete model. Using its Space Enterprise Consortium Other Transaction Authority, the FORGE C2 program shortened capability delivery timelines by more than two years and cut source selection timelines by two months. This is an approach now adopted as a gold standard across more than 600 companies. That is what speed looks like.

The FY27 NDAA opens the door to new and innovative entrants by advancing small business participation in the DIB, requiring second sourcing of certain defense articles like rocket motors, and establishing a whole-of-government approach for qualifying new entrants faster. These reforms are not administrative improvements; they are force multipliers that expand the industrial bench America will depend on in both peace and wartime. But speed into the ecosystem means nothing if the financial architecture cannot sustain new entrants once they are in it. The funding and contract structures must be built for companies that have never navigated a program of record.

The stakes of getting this right extend beyond the battlefield. The U.S. aerospace and defense industry generates nearly $1 trillion in total economic activity and supports 2.2 million jobs, yet defense-related employment fell by 2.1 million between 1985 and 2021, equivalent to roughly 40% of all U.S. manufacturing job losses over that period. The acquisition ecosystem must therefore reward businesses, manufacturers, innovators, and operators who contribute directly to warfighter readiness and mission success.

Balanced Investment: Advanced Technology and Conventional Readiness

Core Objective

The equilibrium between next-generation technologies and conventional military readiness is essential in ensuring the United States can sustain long-term sustainment and replenishment, operational superiority, and industrial readiness at scale. Rebuilding the arsenal of freedom requires both advanced innovation and the production capacity necessary to sustain readiness across all domains.

There is therefore a demand for focusing both on investments that modernize America’s military for future conflict while sustaining the force posture, industrial capacity, and conventional capabilities, depots, launch facilities, logistics infrastructure, and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) capacity necessary to strengthen the Defense Industrial Base. These actions also have the effect of expanding the American defense economy and restoring deterrence. An America First national security strategy depends on ensuring the United States can rapidly build, field, sustain, and scale the systems necessary to maintain military dominance and defend the homeland.

Periods of increased operational demand should not simply be viewed as moments to replenish stockpiles but as opportunities to think ahead and invest by expanding industrial capacity, strengthening production scalability, and reinforcing the long-term readiness necessary to deter future conflict. Military overmatch requires America to build and sustain readiness during peacetime before a crisis exposes vulnerabilities in production capacity, infrastructure, and military readiness.

Considerations

• Prioritize next-generation capabilities critical to maintaining long-term military superiority and global competitiveness:
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Autonomy
  • Cyber capabilities
  • Hypersonics
  • Directed Energy
  • Missile Defense and Missile Defeat
  • Nuclear Modernization
  • Space systems
• Strengthen and sustain conventional military readiness through:
  • Munitions production
  • Naval and maritime power
  • Air and space dominance
  • Armored systems
  • Sustainment infrastructure
  • Critical infrastructure protection and resilience
  • Defense mobilization efforts
• Balance Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) investments with procurement funding necessary to field and sustain mission-ready capabilities at scale.
• Strengthen the arsenal of freedom by ensuring the United States remains technologically superior and industrially capable of rapidly producing, sustaining, and scaling military capabilities faster than adversaries can compete.

Defense investments both sustain and modernize strategic readiness, and the infrastructure behind the weapons matters as much as the weapons themselves. Those programs also reinforce the industrial ecosystems, infrastructure, and production networks necessary to sustain the warfighter and maintain long-term military readiness during both peace and conflict. Letterkenny Army Depot, DOW’s [AGF8] premier center for air defense and tactical missile sustainment, illustrates the point: it maintains and recertifies Patriot[AGF9] , THAAD, HIMARS, and Sentinel systems that are the backbone of U.S. and allied missile defense. Without sustained investment in depots, logistics networks, and sustainment pipelines like Letterkenny, the advanced systems that America fields cannot be kept ready, repaired, or surged when it matters most.

Strategic Importance

Maintaining American military superiority against adversaries requires both technological superiority and the industrial capacity to rapidly build, field, sustain, and replenish mission-ready capabilities at scale. The arsenal of freedom depends on balancing advanced innovation with the production readiness necessary to support the warfighter during both peace and conflict.

The money is there. The reforms have passed. What is missing is the framework that connects the two. Defense appropriations still flow through funding buckets designed for a slower era. RDT&E funds are available for two years, procurement funds are available for three years, O&M for one year, and Military Construction (MILCON) funds are available for five years. Acquisition reform has changed the speed; the funding architecture has not. Programs racing through prototyping can graduate from RDT&E before procurement funding exists to catch them, and without a program of record, there is no O&M, no MILCON, and no bridge to sustained production.

On the contract side, the same gap exists. Other Transaction Authority (OTA) gets companies to prototype fast but leaves no vehicle to scale into production. We now live in a world where venture capital moves in days, and private companies make billion-dollar production decisions based on real-time demand signals. The Department of War cannot compete for the best technology, the best companies, or the best talent if its funding architecture still operates on a years-long budget cycle. Space programs feel this most acutely. Space is dual-use and civil-military in nature, crossing multiple funding streams simultaneously, with Program Elements that do not align with the new acquisition pathways the Department has built, not yet at least.

Rebuilding the arsenal of freedom requires more than acquisition reform; it means restructuring the funding architecture so[AGF10] our military can outpace the speed at which our adversaries seek to inflict harm. The funding is there. The mechanisms now need to all line up to move it.

Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Security

Core Objective

The United States cannot maintain strategic dominance without production capacity, operational readiness, trusted hemispheric partnerships, and industrial strength to rapidly respond to conflict, sustain the warfighter, and defend critical national interests at home and abroad.

America’s overall military superiority depends on the defense of our hemisphere. In the context of defense infrastructure, it begins with ensuring we have the capabilities needed to defend the homeland. Economic power, industrial resiliency, and military superiority are all integral elements of this approach.

Considerations

• Counter the growing influence and coercion of China, Russia, and Iran across the Western Hemisphere through strengthened military partnerships, targeted security cooperation, and a unified command posture.
• Protect critical infrastructure, strategic trade routes, Arctic and maritime access corridors, logistics systems, energy security, and defense-relevant industrial networks.
• Strengthen missile defense architecture, continental security, homeland defense capabilities, and integrated missile warning and tracking systems necessary to defend the North American homeland.
• Support modernization efforts that reinforce Arctic security through North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) modernization priorities, missile warning capabilities, and strategic awareness across emerging threat environments.
• Reinforce industrial resiliency and domestic production capacity as pillars of sovereignty.
• Strengthen trusted partnerships and industrial networks that support North American security, economic cooperation, and long-term regional stability.
• Expand America’s ability to rapidly mobilize industrial resources, sustain military readiness, and support operational forces during periods of strategic competition and conflict.
• Strengthen the DIB’s ability to sustain homeland defense missions, support operational surge requirements, and reinforce America’s strategic position across the Western Hemisphere.

The December 2025 activation of the U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Command, consolidating U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM), Army North, and Army South into a single four-star command serving both U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), is exactly the kind of structural reform our defense planning requires to deter adversaries and assert strategic dominance. As SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis Donovan has stated, transforming security partnerships into force multipliers for hemispheric defense requires both military readiness and the industrial capacity to sustain it.

Homeland defense requires more than military capability alone. Economic dominance, industrial capacity, and military readiness together form the backbone of long-term homeland security and strategic stability. Industrial strength, logistics systems, infrastructure networks, critical infrastructure resilience, production capacity, and operational readiness are necessary to sustain America’s long-term strategic position. Rebuilding the arsenal of freedom is not a peacetime aspiration—it is an immediate operational requirement. The United States must be ready to mobilize, sustain, and surge military and industrial capacity on demand. That readiness begins at home, with the workforce, the supply chains, the funding architecture, and the industrial base that make everything else possible.

Conclusion

The blueprint for revitalizing America’s arsenal of freedom exists. What remains is execution. Building on the Administration’s successes over the last year—particularly the executive orders and other executive actions focused on the eradication of DEI, restoration of the warrior ethos, reform of the defense acquisition process to encourage new entrants and a focus on emerging technologies—there is both an opportunity and a need to restore America’s military superiority in order to achieve strategic dominance over our adversaries and prevent future wars from beginning. That begins on the factory floor and in the many communities and families across the United States that are the foundation of America’s arsenal of freedom.

Rebuilding the arsenal of freedom is not a single program or a single appropriation. It is also not a whole-of-government effort but rather a whole-of-nation effort that runs from the factory floor to the shipyard, from the classroom to the foundry, from the contracting office to the battlefield. It requires a workforce trained and ready, supply chains that are sovereign and resilient, an acquisition system that puts the warfighter first, investments that balance the advanced and the conventional, and a hemispheric posture that deters adversaries before they reach our shores.

The United States has done this before. The arsenal of freedom that won World War II was not built overnight. Most importantly, it was built by American workers, American industry, and American resolve, at the direction of an America First national security policy agenda. The FY27 NDAA represents this generation’s blueprint for doing it again.