The defense industrial base is the backbone of national security.
It is also one of the most structurally underserved sectors in the American economy.
A $900 Billion Ecosystem with a Structural Problem
The Department of Defense's FY2026 materials describe a $961.6 billion total DoD budget request, including reconciliation funding, and a narrower $848.3 billion discretionary request. The Department requested $13.4 billion for AI and autonomy programs alone, the largest single-year commitment to autonomous warfare technology in history.
Behind these headline numbers sits a broad industrial base of 300,000+ defense companies and suppliers. Yet this ecosystem has a structural problem that budget numbers alone cannot solve.
Critical Capabilities, Limited Scale
Where Commercial Innovation Meets National Security
The line between commercial and defense technology is dissolving. The same AI models that optimize logistics for retailers can route military supply chains. The same autonomous navigation that powers commercial drones can enable GPS-denied military operations.
Defense-adjacent venture activity has surged, with approximately $28.4 billion deployed across 361 deals in the first half of 2025 alone. But for every Anduril, hundreds of dual-use companies struggle to cross the chasm from commercial product to defense program of record. The technology works. The business model stalls.
Two Corridors, One Industrial Base
An Infrastructure Problem, Not a Technology Problem
Small and mid-size contractors build extraordinary products. What they lack is the operational scaffolding to compete at scale: compliance programs, capture management, teaming architectures, cleared workforces, and relationships across the acquisition community.
US Defense Group was built to provide this support. We are operators who have built companies in this sector, and we understand from direct experience what it takes to operate here.