Do we have the equivalent of Anduril’s ‘China 27’ policy? Are we stocking up on the machine tools we need for War? ⬇️
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey was recently on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and in amongst several hours of chat, there were a few golden nuggets from a 33 year old self made billionaire who is rewriting the rules for Defence Industry. His ‘China 27’ rule is one for consideration – everything Anduril is working on needs to be planned with the assumption that China invades Taiwan in 2027. We’ve long been talking about warning time evaporating – but have we really moved on from an assumed 10 year warning time mentality?
Palmer also talked about Anduril’s decision to design weapons that can be manufactured with common machine tools used in car manufacturing. Exquisite equipment and an arsenal built by artisans isn’t going to cut it when large nation’s economies are mobilised in support of a long war on a large scale. It brings home the importance of an industrial base that has the potential to pivot should competition give way to conflict.
“We make three different Barracuda missiles. It has 90% fewer parts than legacy cruise missiles. It can be made with 10 tools that all exist in every automotive plant. So you could make this missile at mass scale in any GM facility, in any Ford facility. And that’s really important for us because if you can only make your missiles in this specialized factory that took you 10 years to set up, well, what in the world do you do when you need 100 times more of those missiles made every day?”
Machine tools aren’t something naturally front of mind for many military planners – but they are a vital input to any Defence Industrial base and will be in high demand if we needed to scale manufacturing onshore. You can’t have an arsenal without a deep supply of machine tools and ideally the ability to manufacture machine tools onshore as well.
C4ADS published in interesting report ‘War Machine’ back in 2024 that examined the networks supplying & sustaining Russia’s precision machine tool arsenal. Russia prior to invading Ukraine had become heavily dependent on sourcing machine tools for its industrial base from the West:
“Among the Russian defense industry’s greatest vulnerabilities is its reliance on foreign technologies. Few technologies embody this vulnerability better than computer numeric control (CNC) machine tools—devices that employ computer technology to automate the manufacture of critical defense equipment like precision-guided munitions and aircraft parts.”
Australia would see existing supply chains severed or swamped if competition turned to conflict. When focusing on what weapons and equipment to manufacture onshore and what to stockpile, we should be getting the best minds in Industry to look at what Defence Industrial War Stocks should be created and maintained. No machine tools – no consumables of combat after all!
Food for thought as always, articles mentioned are in the comments.
📷 C4ADS