The U.S. needs affordable weapons to meet the threat from China and other adversaries. The defense company Castelion is attacking the challenge.
The better option is to rebuild—and diversify—the U.S. arsenal. The American free enterprise system is moving to shore up U.S. defenses, and the progress is faster than most observers appreciate. Even with budget dysfunction in Washington and sclerosis in the Pentagon bureaucracy, billions in capital is flowing into counterdrone microwaves, unmanned aircraft and more. America’s private economy is confronting the new character of warfare on display in Ukraine and Iran, and the Trump administration is moving quickly to capitalize on the innovation.
Few challenges are more consequential than the race for a cheap hypersonic missile. …The U.S. is “very far ahead, I’d say, in the high-end technology. We are woefully far behind on the speed to develop, the capacity, and the cost,” Mr. Hargis says. “Almost all wars end up in an economic exchange ratio that determines the winner”—that is, the side whose weapons are cheaper, as many Americans have now noticed in Ukraine and Iran.