Anduril’s “Arsenal 1” and “Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy”

January 22, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - With the conflict in Ukraine exposing how unprepared the United States’ military industrial base is for a peer or near-peer conflict, continued efforts are being made to either match Russian and Chinese military industrial output or otherwise compensate for it. 

Many attempts to do so, including ongoing efforts by the US Army to expand 155mm artillery shell production, have shown progress but have fallen far short of matching let alone exceeding the output of just Russian shell production alone. 

China, whose industrial base overall dwarfs that of the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea combined, has demonstrated not only an ability to surpass the US in quantity, but now also in quality. 

China has already established one of the largest and most capable missile forces on Earth. It also possesses one of the largest, most advanced integrated air defense systems which includes battle-proven Russia-built S-400 air defense systems. In recent years it has expanded the production of its Chengdu J-20 5th generation warplane to match the numbers of the US’ F-22 fighter jet and is on track to match the annual production rate of the US’ other 5th generation warplane, the F-35.

Last year, China unveiled its own additional 5th generation warplane, the J-35 and will likely expand production to match or exceed that of the J-20. 

The US Department of Defense admits that many of the munitions these Chinese warplanes carry are as capable or are more capable than those carried by US warplanes including air-to-air missiles with longer ranges than their US counterparts.  

In terms of shipbuilding, China has surpassed the United States so profoundly US policymakers admit closing the gap is unrealistic and instead seek to compensate through the development and manufacturing of large numbers of smaller vessels and aircraft including a variety of autonomous systems. 

It should seem obvious that if China is capable of matching or exceeding the US in terms of missile, aircraft, and ship production, possessing the largest most prolific commercial drone company on Earth (DJI), China will be easily able to match or exceed both the quantities and quality of US-made autonomous systems. 

Anduril and “Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy” 

This conclusion appears lost on Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR - a virtual reality headset manufacturer - and now founder of arms manufacturer Anduril. Luckey believes that Anduril will be able to “hyperscale” production of autonomous aircraft, maritime vessels, and munitions to “rebuild the arsenal of democracy,” and lend victory to the US in a future great-power conflict with China.   

Anduril drones have already been used over the battlefield in Ukraine, a peer-conflict the US is waging against Russia by proxy. Those drones have failed to grant Ukraine any advantage as its forces face a total collapse of fighting capacity, losing heavily defended territory to advancing Russian forces at an accelerated rate across the entire line of contact. 

Much of Ukraine’s failure on the battlefield is owed to the limits of its Western sponsors and their ability to field practical, low-cost, and numerous enough weapons and systems to match those Russia is deploying. 

It could be argued that Anduril’s technology hasn’t been fully matured and the advantage of “hyperscaling” not yet been fully realized, but a much more likely explanation is a fundamental flaw in Anduril’s approach based on an equally flawed understanding of geopolitics and national security, coupled with self-serving short-sighted priorities including profit-over-purpose. 

In a January 17, 2025 interview with Bloomberg Technology, Luckey described the building of “Arsenal 1,” Anduril’s first “hyperscale” production facility. Based in Ohio, Luckey claims it will provide up to 4,000 jobs over the course of the next 10 years and produce 1,000s of Anduril “defense products” including cruise missiles and autonomous warplanes. 

Luckey sells “Arsenal 1” as a vision of not only revolutionizing US-based military manufacturing, but as a means of compensating for China’s vast industrial base and growing military might. To fully achieve this vision, however, Luckey insists on the US “leveraging the whole of the nation,” to face and overcome the threat he claims China poses. 

Selling Overpriced, Under-Performing or So-Far Non-Existent Weapons 

Forbes, in its own recent article about the construction of the facility, claims: 

The plant is designed to produce tens of thousands of drones per year. Initially these are likely to be Anduril’s current product range , the Fury an autonomous jet fighter which work alongside crewed platforms, the Roadrunner, a one-way interceptor and attack drone and Barracuda, a family of long-range attack drones or cruise missiles with ranges of 100-500 miles.

However, based on publicly available information, neither the Fury nor the Barracuda have been built even as prototypes let alone finished products. Instead, Luckey often poses in front of what are most likely 1:1 scale models of the proposed weapon systems which will face years of further development before they end up mass produced and sold to the US government or exported abroad. 

Chinese Military Might vs Washington’s Asymmetrical Tools of Empire

January 11, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Over the past few months China has achieved several breakthroughs in terms of military power in both quantity and quality including the introduction of new aircraft, increased production rates of existing aircraft, and the launching of a new amphibious assault ship proposed as recently as 2020, demonstrating a rapid progression from drawing board to dockside all within China’s already vast shipbuilding capacity.

The implications of these recent developments impact ongoing US encroachment in the Asia-Pacific and the looming prospect of a Ukraine-style war the US appears eager to launch against China. However, just as the US has demonstrated elsewhere, what it lacks in military and industrial power, it makes up for in political influence and its asymmetrical capacity to destabilize and destroy entire regions of the planet. 

China’s Expanding Air Force

At the Zhuhai Airshow in November 2024, China unveiled its twin-engine Shenyang J-35 fifth-generation fighter. Defense News would note that the J-35’s introduction together with the mass-produced Chengdu J-20 makes China only the second nation in the world to field two types of fifth-generation warplanes besides the US with its F-22 and F-35 fighters. 

While many attempts have been made to dismiss China’s fifth-generation warplanes as cheap copies of American warplanes, both the J-35 and J-20 represent entirely different designs fulfilling entirely different requirements, and mass-produced with flexible and rapidly updated manufacturing techniques quickly closing the fifth-generation fighter gap with the US.

Not only does this mean China will possess at least as many fighter planes as the US, it also means China will be able to rapidly replace lost aircraft in the event of any peer or near-peer conflict including with the United States.

In 2022, South China Morning Post reported that China was speeding up production of its J-20 warplane often seen as China’s answer to the US F-22. At the time, it was estimated China had produced up to 200 J-20s, a comparable number to the current number of F-22s the US operates. 

By 2024, Air & Space Forces Magazine would report that China may be building up to 100 J-20 airframes per year - all of which are for use by China’s armed forces. While the US produces 135 F-35s a year (with 1,000 produced in total), most of these aircraft are for export to US allies.  Because Chinese production of the J-20 has increased since its introduction it cannot be ruled out that China will continue producing these aircraft at an accelerated rate. 

With the introduction of the J-35 last November, a similar production rate may follow. 

Washington’s Unstoppable Superweapon

Editor's Note: The original article published on NEO had a significant editing mistake where several paragraphs were accidentally moved out of order and published and may or may not be corrected by the time you read it. Below is the corrected version.

January 1, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In recent months, even across the collective West’s media, growing admissions are being made about both Russia and China’s superior military industrial capacity. With Russia’s first use of the intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, it is admitted that Russia (and likely China) possess formidable military capabilities the collective West currently lacks.

Despite the collective efforts of NATO in arming, training, and backing Ukraine, Ukrainian forces continue to give ground at an accelerated rate across the entire line of contact amid the ongoing Russian Special Military Operation (SMO). 

Yet, even as this new paradigm sinks in, the US has demonstrated it still possesses a powerful and so far unparalleled and yet unanswered superweapon. It used it to create conditions across the Arab World to slowly and steadily hollow out both the Syrian economy and the Syrian Arab Army resulting in the total collapse of both in mid-December 2024 after years of staving off US-backed terrorists attempting to overrun the country. 

Not only did the Syrian economy, army, and thus government collapse, many across the world cheered on as UN-listed terrorist organizations seized power in Damascus and publicly carried out atrocities in Syria’s streets against ethnic, religious, and political opponents. 

All of this is owed to Washington’s unanswered “superweapon” and its control over global information and political space. 

Washington’s Superweapon: Political Interference, Capture, and Control  

Not as glamorous as an Oreshnik missile, Washington’s superweapon is in fact many times more powerful and more difficult to defend against. 

Beginning as regime-change operations carried out by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it has transformed over the years into what is now known as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). 

The NED oversees a network of subsidiaries (Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute (NDI)) as well as adjacent government organizations (USAID) and private foundations (Open Society, Omidyar Network) which fund hundreds of organizations, projects, opposition groups, and political parties on every inhabited continent on Earth. 

The Middle East: Setting the Battlefield for War with Iran 

In recent years, it trained armies of agitators years ahead of the 2011 “Arab Spring” to return to their home nations and overthrow their respective governments. The political turmoil these US-backed agitators created was leveraged by likewise US-backed armed extremists to violently depose governments that refused to cave to political pressure. 

While the NED’s own website claims it “promotes freedom around the world,” its political interference has destabilized and destroyed entire nations and even whole regions of the planet, leading to hundreds of thousands of dead and millions displaced. What is left of these nations is rendered into an internally warring failed state or a client regime serving Washington’s interests entirely at the expense of the targeted nation’s own best interests - sometimes a combination of both. 

The region itself is taking a very deliberate shape aimed at encircling, isolating, and eventually targeting and toppling the nations of Iran which represents the center of resistance to US hegemony in the region. 

NED in Europe: Creating a “Democratic” Russia 

Another example is Ukraine. Efforts by the US NED to overthrow an independent and neutral Ukraine began as early as 2004, the Guardian would report. An identical operation would repeat itself again in 2014, this time succeeding. It included not only NED-funded political agitators, but also armed extremists including Neo-Nazis joined on stage by US senators cheering them on in Kiev. 

Washington’s War in Ukraine: Narrowing Options, Growing Consequences

November 21, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Russia’s use of its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in eastern Ukraine represents an unprecedented escalation in what began as a US proxy war against Russia in 2014.

The missile’s capabilities represent a serious non-nuclear means of striking targets anywhere in Europe without the collective West;s ability to sufficiently defend against it.

The possibility of the West now facing direct consequences for what has so far been a proxy war, may reintroduce rational thought across the West otherwise not required when spending the lives of others. It may, however, cause Western policymakers to double down, confident in the belief that they remain decoupled from any possible consequences despite unprecedented escalation.

Fundamentals, Not Wonder Weapons are Winning the War

The missile’s use is only the latest demonstration of Russia’s military and escalatory dominance amid the ongoing proxy war. It alone would be unable to significantly impact the fighting, but because the Russian Federation over the last two decades has invested deeply in the fundamentals of national defense, it compliments a range of other capabilities serving as a deterrence against continued Western encroachment.

Before the deployment of the Oreshnik, the progress of Russian forces along the line of contact in Ukraine had been accelerating, triggering panic across the capitals of Western nations. This was not achieved through any single “wonder weapon,” but through Russia’s post-Cold War strategy of preparing its military forces and its military industrial capacity to wage a large-scale, prolonged, and intense conflict against Western-backed forces building up along Russia’s borders.

This included the development and large-scale production of both simple and advanced weapons ranging from main battle tanks and other armored vehicles, to drones, cruise missiles, air defense systems, and electronic warfare capabilities.

Because Russia’s arms industry operates under state-owned enterprises prioritizing state needs over generating profit, the systems required in terms of both quality and quantity were made available. This was possible because surplus production capacity had been maintained across a large number of Russian arms production facilities. Excess labor and equipment that would have been slashed by private enterprise across the West to maximize profits was maintained if and when needed. Come February 2022, this excess capacity was utilized and has since been the central factor contributing to Russia’s growing success against NATO-backed forces in Ukraine.

The West, on the other hand, is suffering a growing military industrial crisis. Excess production capacity needs to be built from scratch, taking years or longer. Across the collective West, skilled labor shortages prevent assembly lines from being expanded significantly, even if the will and resources exist to do so. In all areas of production, from air defense missiles to artillery shells, the collective West is struggling to meet even the most meager production targets.

US Foreign Policy vs. China Continues Under Trump

November 21, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The incoming Trump administration is poised to pick up where the Biden administration has left off on the decades-spanning centerpiece of US foreign policy - the encirclement and containment of China. This includes through an intense US military build up across the Asia-Pacific region, provocations over the island province of Taiwan, and continued interference in nations along China’s periphery. 

It also means a continuation of opposing cooperation between China and nations around the globe seeking alternatives to the debt, division, and destitution decades of US domination have imposed upon them, including across Latin America. 

With the appointment of leading neo-conservative war hawks to key positions including US Secretary of State, the US Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, far from ending America’s wars abroad, the incoming Trump administration is poised to reprioritize and pivot toward the largest and most dangerous confrontation of all. 

Target China and the Continuity of Agenda

US foreign policy since the end of World War 2 has fixated on the elimination of all peer and near-peer adversaries including China. A 1965 memorandum from then US Secretary of State Robert McNamara to then US President Lyndon B. Johnson identified China as chief among these adversaries.

The memorandum noted that ongoing US military operations in Vietnam, “make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain Communist China.”

It stated explicitly, “China looms as a major power threatening to undercut our importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us.”

The same memorandum would identify 3 fonts along which the US sought to contain China, “(a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front,” fronts along which US efforts to contain China including through the stationing of tens of thousands of US troops continues to this day - US troops closer to Chinese territory than America’s own shores. 

When the Cold War ended, the US renewed its pursuit of global primacy in what is often referred to as the “Wolfowitz doctrine,” articulated in a 1992 New York Times article titled, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop,” stating: 

In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America's political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union.

The same article noted that US foreign policy, “makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.” 

And from the end of the Cold War to present day the US has fought wars of aggression cutting a swath of death and destruction from North Africa to Central Asia, spanning the presidencies of George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr., Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, often with one administration helping set the stage for subsequent wars launched under successive administrations. 

Examples of this include preparations by the Bush Jr. administration for the overthrow of the Syrian government, a policy eventually executed during the 2011 so-called “Arab Spring” under the Obama administration, and continued throughout both the subsequent Trump and Biden administrations. 

The ongoing war in Ukraine likewise involved incremental steps pursued by US administrations stretching back to 2004 under President Bush Jr. where regime change was pursued, finally succeeding under the Obama administration in 2014, continuing under the Trump administration when US arms began flowing to Ukraine, and finally pulling Russia into direct conflict with Ukraine under the Biden administration. 

While supporters of the incoming Trump administration have claimed President-elect Donald Trump represents a break from these special interests and their agenda of US-imposed domination around the globe, both the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy published in 2017 and the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) connected to President-elect Trump proposed and pursued policies indistinguishable from those laid out by America’s neo-conservative establishment for decades. 

The Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy would claim: 

The United States will respond to the growing political, economic, and military competitions we face around the world. China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.

The same strategy paper would insist in regards to the projection of American power abroad that, “we will advance American influence because a world that supports American interests and reflects our values makes America more secure and prosperous.”  

It is no surprise then that US political interference, proxy wars, and actual wars all continued under the Trump administration from 2016-2020 without exception. 

The subsequent Biden administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy would say of China: 

The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it. Beijing has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power. It is using its technological capacity and increasing influence over international institutions to create more permissive conditions for its own authoritarian model, and to mold global technology use and norms to privilege its interests and values. Beijing frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries. It benefits from the openness of the international economy while limiting access to its domestic market, and it seeks to make the world more dependent on the PRC while reducing its own dependence on the world. The PRC is also investing in a military that is rapidly modernizing, increasingly capable in the Indo-Pacific, and growing in strength and reach globally – all while seeking to erode U.S. alliances in the region and around the world.

This sentiment does not represent a separate or different strategy from that under the Trump or even Obama administration before that, or the 1992 Wolfowitz doctrine or those presented by Secretary MacNamara in 1965, but instead the evolution of a singular strategy pursued post-World War 2, continued post-Cold War, up to and including today.  

AFPI’s current website under a section titled, “Hold Communist China Fully Accountable for Chronic Unfair Trade Practices, Stealing American Technologies, and Polluting our Planet’s Air and Oceans,” says: 

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) represent the premier national security threat to the United States. China’s concerning activities include chronic unfair trade practices, stealing American technologies, aggression against its neighbors, abuse of the environment, and an accelerating nuclear weapons program. Additionally, China has displayed a complete lack of transparency about the origins of COVID-19. We must hold China fully accountable for its actions.

Just as with the 1965 State Department memorandum, the 1992 US Department of Defense strategy paper, the 2017 and 2022 Trump and Biden administration National Security Strategies, AFPI insists that China’s rise is a threat to US interests abroad and that military and economic measures must be taken to contain this rise. 

Beyond baseless accusations, no explanation is provided by any of these documents spanning half a century as to why the US is entitled to dictate the means by which nations beyond American borders interact including through trade and security cooperation or why China’s rise in the Asia-Pacific region and its growing influence around the globe somehow threatens the actual security of the United States within its own borders.

Instead, these documents are concerned that America’s own unwarranted influence abroad, built on political interference, as well as economic and military coercion, will be displaced by a more attractive and constructive relationship with China amid a greater balance of global power through what is often referred to as multipolarism. 

Chinese Infrastructure vs. American Interference 

Most recently, developments in the Latin American nation of Peru provide a showcase of China’s role in driving development, economic trade, and the construction of infrastructure with the completion of the Chancay Megaport, investments in energy infrastructure as well as the development of 5G telecommunication networks.  

The Chancay port not only supercharges imports and exports from Peru itself, but because of its strategic location in South America including a shared border with Brazil, it enables the movement of goods and people from one side of the continent to the other, transforming Chancay into a regional logistics hub. 

The US government has opposed Chinese investments, infrastructure projects, and growing trade around the world, including in Latin America. On US government-funded media platforms like Diálogo Americas, maintained by US Southern Command, a clear policy of opposing Chinese influence is pushed using fabricated claims of “dual-use infrastructure,” providing a “foothold for a future military presence in the region.”