WASHINGTON, September 22 — The Pentagon is not short of money. It is short of time, and the difference between those two things is now the central problem in the American defence industrial base. That is the argument put forward by James DeMuth, chief executive of Seurat, a company that makes metal parts using a high-speed additive process it calls Area Printing.
Writing in an analysis of the industrial-base problem, DeMuth points to a balance sheet that would make most procurement officials envious. The Department of Defense began fiscal 2026 holding $382.4 billion in unexpired, unobligated appropriations.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act added $152.3 billion more. And in June the administration requested an additional $67.1 billion. Under the hood, though, appropriations do not shorten lead time.
That is the technical reality DeMuth wants acquisition leaders to confront.
The two-year interceptor and the longer qualification
Boeing builds the active radar seeker for every PAC-3 MSE interceptor in Huntsville, Alabama. In April, the Pentagon signed a seven-year framework to triple that output. A finished interceptor takes about two years to build.
Qualifying a new component supplier takes even longer. So rounds bought this year are unlikely to reach the field before 2028.
Capacity that cannot produce a qualified part for two or three years is potential capacity, not military capacity. The gap, as DeMuth frames it, is mobilisation latency — and qualification is one of its largest hidden components. Double demand for a critical munition tomorrow and the sequence is predictable.
Congress can appropriate money within weeks. Industry can buy equipment within months.
But every new supplier then enters an 18- to 36-month qualification cycle. The money moves fast. The paperwork and the test evidence do not.
Three changes that need no new authority
DeMuth proposes three fixes. None requires new authority. None lowers a standard.
First, let defence suppliers that have earned a qualification for one program keep that qualification when seeking work in another program with similar requirements. The doctrine he calls “qualify once, use many” keeps part qualification program-specific but makes evidence about the factory portable.
He notes that JAQS-SQ, a $10.5-million Pentagon-funded America Makes project call, is building that framework now, and that Seurat is one of 25 awardees. What is missing is a decision by acquisition leaders to accept each other’s results. Second, fund qualification as its own budget line.
The cost, by DeMuth’s estimate, is about one percent of industrial-base appropriations — roughly $82 million against the $8.2 billion the Reconciliation Act routed through the Industrial Base Fund. Third, increase multiyear acquisition to create demand lower-tier suppliers can use to secure financing.
DeMuth discloses that Seurat would benefit directly if the government spent more on supplier qualification. He also writes that his industry spent two decades promising more than it delivered, with additive manufacturing mostly printing prototypes and low-volume parts. As ever, the detail that matters is not the size of the cheque but how long it takes to clear.
What to watch next is whether acquisition leaders take up the portability question — and whether qualification gets a line of its own before the next round of supplemental money lands.
