I want to know what we're making here at home:
- The raw materials we have.
- The manufacturing capacity we can draw on.
- The people with the skills to turn those resources into working systems.
Questions I am asking:
- What are we strong at?
- Where do we depend on others?
- What would it take to close the gaps?
I know the economics of warfare are changing. A cheap drone can force a destroyer to fire a multimillion-dollar missile. That interception may save lives or protect something far more valuable. But repeated enough, the imbalance becomes a strategic problem. Budgets are finite. Stockpiles shrink. Replacements take time.
The question is whether we can afford, produce, and replenish the capabilities we need at the pace a conflict demands.
Answering that requires understanding the full cost. An aircraft carrier’s purchase price is only the beginning. Research and development, personnel, daily operations, maintenance, refueling, modernization, and retirement all belong in the calculation. Development costs must be spread across the systems actually produced. Availability matters, too: how much time can a ship spend operating, and how much must it spend in a shipyard?
It also requires looking beneath the finished product. Having a mineral deposit is different from having the capacity to mine, refine, and process it. A factory needs machinery, energy, components, and reliable suppliers. Expanding production requires skilled workers and time to recruit, train, and retain them.
Eventually, I want DefDex to help evaluate these capabilities. In AI, evaluations help us compare systems across dimensions such as quality, search performance, speed, and cost. I want to bring that same discipline to understanding defense: clear criteria, transparent evidence, and comparisons grounded in the job a system needs to do.
For weapons, that means evaluating lethality, effectiveness, reliability, survivability, and lifetime cost alongside production speed, maintenance demands, and the ability to replenish losses. The economics should account for the cost of achieving a mission, the value of what is protected, and whether that performance can be sustained.
Materials need their own measures: scarcity, cost, available supply, supplier concentration, processing capacity, and the time required to bring new sources online. Manufacturing depends on throughput, lead times, and room to expand. Labor depends on the availability of critical skills, training capacity, and how long it takes to build expertise.
The goal is to make the tradeoffs visible and distinguish what we know from what we still need to find out.
I served in the military and I've always been interested in politics and international relations. DefDex brings those interests together around a practical concern: whether America’s industrial foundation can support its strategic ambitions.
My perspective is America-first. I want this country to have the resources, manufacturing capability, and workforce to provide for its own security. That means understanding which foreign dependencies leave us exposed and where rebuilding domestic capacity matters most.
I want to understand what America builds, how we defend ourselves, what we can sustain, and what we need to rebuild.