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The U.S. defense industrial base is often understood through its largest prime contractors, but the system’s true vulnerabilities lie deep below the surface. Platforms from ships to aircraft and munitions sit atop a multi-tiered supply chain ecosystem, where increasingly specialized suppliers provide the components, materials, and sub-systems critical to the final product.
This graphic illustrates the layered structure of the defense industrial base, from prime contractors at the top to the lower-tier suppliers that form its hidden foundation. While risks at the prime level are visible and actively managed, fragility accumulates in the lower tiers, where small, capital-constrained firms face single-source dependencies, limited surge capacity, and exposure to foreign supply chains. Disruptions at these levels often remain unseen until they cascade upward, halting production or delaying the delivery of critical systems.
