I'm John Batchel with my colleague Gregory Coppola, looking at the defense industrial base.

Once upon a time, the arsenal of democracy.

Now, not so much.

What is to be done, Gregory?

Well, the reality is that we have reached a watershed in many respects with the defense

industrial base,

with industrial methods and opportunities overall, not just with defense.

But we've also reached a pivotal point in the change of the global trade architecture,

the supply chain, if you like.

So decisions have to be made.

President Trump's key decision was to incentivize the return of manufacturing to the United

States and a manufacturing economy.

This is a long-term process, of course, and it's not going to happen overnight.

But in the meantime, those key elements of the US defense industrial base have become old.

They've become rust belt technologies in some respects, not to over-dramatize it.

But the reality is that the great focus now of aerospace and defense power,

I think companies like General Dynamics like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and the

like, they now have to modernize to get to the next generation.

And we're seeing that move.

We're seeing the end now of the F-35 era,

even though we're still producing F-16 variants,

much more improved than in the 70s.

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