‘Very, very strange time’: After a big 2025, what’s next for the defense industry?

Mainstream coverage treats defense profits as the headline and “Congressional dysfunction” as the convenient villain. That framing dodges the harder question: why Washington keeps asking industry to do more while failing to define clear, durable priorities for what America is defending and why.

Conservatives aren’t allergic to a healthy defense sector. We’re wary of a system that rewards churn over outcomes. When budgets lurch from crisis to crisis, contractors price in uncertainty, timelines slip, and taxpayers absorb the overruns. Public trust erodes when procurement looks like insider baseball instead of strategy.

The real issue is national security and institutional stability: predictable funding, serious oversight, and production that can surge when needed. Rule of law budgeting matters because it forces choices. A stronger defense starts with clarity, not perpetual turbulence.