Strengthening America's defense industrial base

In a report published in 2022, the Department of Defense argued, "Since the 1990s, the defense sector has consolidated substantially, transitioning from 51 to 5 aerospace and defense prime contractors." It is not clear that defense budget cuts caused any such problem. Even in lean times, post-1990 defense budgets remained typically three-quarters of the Cold War average. Indeed, today, U.S. national defense spending exceeds that of any year during the Cold War even after adjusting for inflation.