Center for the Industrial Base

Reimagining government-industry collaboration to foster innovation, build capacity, and achieve victory.

CSIS’s Center for the Industrial Base (CIB), formerly the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group (DIIG), provides impactful research on the ways in which the United States and its allies can collaborate more effectively with industry of all types and build their respective industrial bases. The center primarily focuses on 1) DOD and federal industrial base challenges, 2) government contracting trends in defense, civilian agencies, and international markets, 3) industry-government collaboration, and 4) international industrial cooperation. CIB monitors important developments in the global defense industry and produces major research projects and long-form reports; commentaries and articles in popular media; and annual conferences and livestream roundtables.

About the Center for the Industrial Base

Learn more about the CSIS Center for the Industrial Base and the experts and staff that contribute to our analysis.

Jerry McGinn
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Photo: MATTHEW WEINBERGER/DVIDS

Photo: MATTHEW WEINBERGER/DVIDS

Outlining the Challenges to U.S. Naval Shipbuilding

The U.S. naval shipbuilding enterprise struggles to produce ships at the scale and speed demanded despite being a bipartisan priority for successive administrations and Congress. The White House must tackle complex, longstanding challenges to improve shipbuilding capacity.

Report by Seamus P. Daniels, Henry H. Carroll, Cynthia R. Cook, Oliver Buntin, and Sarah O’Rourke — December 16, 2025

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Measuring Service Contract Performance

Services account for over 41 percent of DoD contract obligations. This CSIS report looks at a million contracts to evaluate how three factors influence performance: service complexity, contract-management capacity, and vendor’s history working with a DoD contracting.

Report by Gregory Sanders and Andrew Philip Hunter — September 18, 2020

U.S. Arms Transfer Policy

The Trump Administration released its new Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) policy and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) export policy in April 2018. It constitutes the first update to the CAT policy since January 2014. 

Event — August 8, 2018

Essential Imperatives for U.S. Arms Transfer Policy

While the economic imperative associated with arms transfers is important for industry stakeholders, the security and humanitarian imperatives inherent in this issue should not be forgotten.

Commentary by Andrew P. Hunter and Melissa Dalton — July 24, 2018

Charting a New Course for the Industrial Base

Panel discussants will include current and former representatives of United States Government and industry, and discussion will focus on addressing the needs of the industrial base through investments in key capabilities, acquisition reform, and industrial base policy.

Event — January 22, 2018

Reorganizing the Defense Acquisition System

On Tuesday (August 1), the Department of Defense (DoD) submitted a report to Congress outlining its plans for realigning the organizational structure of the defense acquisition system to address concerns about securing U.S. technological superiority as required by the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Critical Questions by Andrew P. Hunter and Rhys McCormick — August 3, 2017

U.S.-Canadian Defense Industrial Cooperation

This study evaluates the health of the U.S.-Canadian defense industrial relationship, which is critically important as the U.S. Department of Defense expands the national technology and industrial base.

Report by Gregory Sanders, Andrew Philip Hunter, James Ruedlinger, Jesse Ellman, and Kristina Obecny — June 30, 2017