How to Build and Enhance America’s Defense Franchises 

Key Points

• While some weapons systems possess the marks of a franchise, more American military platforms should become franchise products, exported to the countries of the free world and providing a steady stream of revenue for America’s defense industrial base. 
• Pouring time, effort, and funds into new systems makes little sense when the US has best-in-the-world platforms that, when enhanced with existing commercial technologies, can form their own spin-off franchises. 
• More American military hardware purchased abroad translates into more spare parts for America’s equipment, greater interoperability between allied systems, exportable training, and additional profits for reinvestment into two-year upgrade cycles.

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Introduction

 Over $28 billion. That is the amount Marvel Studios has grossed worldwide at the box office with the 31 movies that form its cinematic universe.1 Marvel meets every mark of a successful franchise, possessing a common brand, a common storyline, and profits that enable production of even more films in the franchise. There are many other examples of film franchises; some of them are successful and others not so much. The key to a successful film franchise seems to be a careful balance of investment to keep the films fresh while not deviating too much from the storyline. 

The US military should take a lesson or two from the movie studios and consider how to make its own franchises, not of films and storylines but of military hardware. While some weapons already possess the marks of a franchise, more American military platforms should become franchise products, exported to the countries of the free world and providing a steady stream of revenue for America’s domestic defense industrial base.2 The benefits of franchise platforms go beyond steady revenue, however. More American military hardware purchased abroad translates into more spare parts for America’s own equipment, greater interoperability between allied systems, more exportable training, and additional profits for reinvestment into two-year upgrade cycles. 

The current defense strategy of “divest to invest” has put US military services on a path to forging ahead with decades-long “new builds” that they deem central to their modernization efforts, while ridding themselves of platforms in present use. This, however, is likely a doomed path; instead, the services should declare and commit to already-existing, best-in-the-world military hardware franchises. New builds such as the Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program and the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program may contain useful leap-ahead technology, but the costs of pursuing the platforms within these programs have historically outweighed their benefits, at least for the past 40-plus years.

As the Cold War ended, the US defense industrial base lost its market dominance to create entirely new platforms from scratch. Instead, the defense industrial base has become increasingly good at integrating commercial technology into existing weapons, thus making these the best in the world. 

Cost, as measured in time and money, is a precious commodity for the Pentagon, and moving forward with untested new systems siphons too much of both. Equally important as time and money is the opportunity cost of not upgrading current systems, leaving the US military to shrink, age in place, and divest existing world-class capabilities for the promise of more tomorrow.3 Another key reason to build on existing platforms is that adding in new technology such as augmented reality, embedded maintenance, driver- or pilot-assisted technology, and other potential artificial intelligence enhancements simply cannot be done with new, unproven platforms because they require enormous amounts of data to train the algorithms. Enhancing existing platforms enables the services to use the data generated by thousands of current platforms to train these algorithms.4 This is how the Army was able to get the Black Hawk helicopter to fly autonomously in such a short period. 

Lastly but probably most importantly, walking away from these existing franchises may discourage allied nations from buying these platforms while encouraging other nations to enter the marketplace with competing weapons. This has been demonstrated recently by South Korean deals with Poland for tanks and fighter jets.5 

Pouring time, effort, and funds into new systems makes little sense when America has best-in-the-world platforms that, when enhanced with existing commercial technologies, can form their own spin-off franchises; the rotary-wing franchise, the ground combat vehicle franchise, and the fighter aircraft franchise are but three examples. The US military should pursue, build up, and enhance these three franchises with gusto, exporting the ready-made American technologies and platforms of today rather than the unproven and sometimes notional platforms of tomorrow. In addition, as an added bonus from an industrial-base perspective, expanding these production lines today will ensure capacity and capability for the next several decades. If this approach is not taken, the services may have to shut down production lines, thus signaling to the world that the arsenal of democracy is closed for new business. 

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Notes

1. Travis Clark, Samantha Delouya, and Will Gendron, “All 31 Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies, Ranked by How Much Money They Made at the Global Box Office,” Insider, May 4, 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/marvel-movies-ranked-how-much-money-at-global-box-office-2021-11. 

2. John G. Ferrari and Giselle Donnelly, “Make the Abrams the Free World’s Tank,” Bulwark, January 25, 2023, https://www.thebulwark.com/make-the-abrams-the-free-worlds-tank.

3. Mackenzie Eaglen, “Give Legacy Weapons a New Lease on Life,” AEIdeas, January 23, 2023, https://www.aei.org/ foreign-and-defense-policy/give-legacy-weapons-a-new-lease-on-life; and Mackenzie Eaglen and Hallie Coyne, The 2020s Tri-Service Modernization Crunch, American Enterprise Institute, March 2021, https://www.aei.org/research-products/ report/2020s-tri-service-modernization-crunch. 

4. Government Accountability Office, “Artificial Intelligence: Status of Developing and Acquiring Capabilities for Weapon Systems,” February 2022, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104765.pdf. 

5. Associated Press, “First Delivery of S. Korean Heavy Weapons Comes to Poland,” December 6, 2022, https://apnews.com/ article/europe-business-poland-seoul-south-korea-6d7a06d58323ef77fd4ce3024110e0e8; and Reuters, “Poland Buys 48 Light Combat Aircraft from South Korea,” September 16, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/poland-buys- 48-light-combat-aircraft-south-korea-2022-09-16.