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Numerous problems affect the mobilization capability of U.S. defense industry. These include legal requirements; the recent growth in lead times—perhaps the most meaningful indicator of defense industry responsiveness—and factors which determine this responsiveness, such as the adequacy of raw material supplies, investment in new processes and technologies, machine-tool industry capacity, availability of subcontractors, contractor productivity, and requirements imposed by socioeconomic policies. Mobilization capability is not a static phenomenon: it can either improve or deteriorate. Efforts to improve mobilization capability will also increase the efficiency of defense industry and its ability to meet near-term demands; failure to address these problems over the near term will result in continued deterioration of industry mobilization capability and responsiveness to short-term as well as long-range needs.

During the past two decades, the sea power of the Soviet Union has undergone remarkable growth in size as well as capability. At the same time, that of the United States has suffered steady decline. Moscow has moved deliberately to exploit its new-found maritime outreach for political purposes, while ensuring that its sea power will be capable of successfully discharging far more important wartime functions. The maritime lessons that clearly have been assimilated by the leaders in the Kremlin have just as obviously been ignored by Western governments in general and the United States in particular. Unless these present trends are reversed, the outlook for Western industrialized nations—heavily dependent on use of the seas as they are—is grim. Indications from the Reagan administration suggest that a resuscitation of the American Navy is about to begin. There is a very long way to go, however, and if in the meantime U.S. allies and friends do not make a serious effort to assume their fair share of the burden, they may find themselves left in the lurch if the United States is ultimately forced to take unilateral action to protect its own interests, the needs of its allies notwithstanding.

In retrospect, the United States has experienced repeated failure in the efforts of successive administrations over the last decade to bring about an improved relationship with the Soviet Union because of fundamentally different Soviet and American security interests and objectives and conceptions of the role of force in international politics. The debate in the United States about the SALT II Treaty provided the basis for a broader discussion of the adequacy of American defense capabilities in light of the growth of Soviet capabilities and the manifest propensity to extend Soviet influence by direct means, as in Afghanistan, or by the use of surrogates, as in Africa. In the years ahead, the United States faces the need both to rebuild its military forces and to fashion a global political strategy that deters the Soviet Union from exploiting whatever advantages may be perceived to accrue from vast military capabilities during this period of vulnerability in which interests vital to the United States and its allies will be at stake.