During Tuesday’s opening day of the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit in Carlisle, Sen. Dave McCormick made it a point to underscore the importance of the Commonwealth in the nation’s defense industrial base.
“There’s no place more fitting, no single place more fitting in America to bring this team together,” said the senator as he gave opening remarks for the two-day gathering at the U.S. Army War College. “Pennsylvania has the factories, the innovators, the energy, the workforce that America needs.”
Backing up the senator’s claim, Exiger, a market-leading supply chain AI company and largest provider of supply chain risk technology to the U.S. Government, released a report entitled The Defense Industrial Base in Pennsylvania.
“The comprehensive report compiled by Exiger underscores the indispensable role Pennsylvania’s defense industrial base plays in our nation’s security,” said McCormick, who put together the two-day summit that brings together leading defense and tech companies. “The data speaks for itself. Pennsylvania is home to one of the strongest and most diverse defense industrial bases in the country,” adding that the summit “will showcase Pennsylvania’s profound role in ensuring America’s military remains the most formidable fighting force the world has ever seen.”
“Exiger’s AI can map supply chains in ways nobody else can,” said Exiger CEO Brandon Daniels in a statement. “Our report gives leaders convening at the U.S. Army War College deep visibility into the Commonwealth’s supply chain and into the role it plays in the larger defense industrial base while providing a blueprint to protect and grow Pennsylvania’s defense economy and the more than 8,000 businesses it sustains.”
Kit Conklin, chief strategy and global affairs officer for Exiger, said the company identified Pennsylvania as a key state due to its small and medium-sized manufacturers that produce essential components for military systems. The report highlights the state’s unique manufacturing capabilities, including historic facilities and AI labs, and breaks down the state into six regions, each contributing critically to the defense ecosystem. The report was generated using AI to analyze vast datasets, and it underscores the importance of maintaining these facilities to ensure national security.
“There are thousands of companies all over the country that support various aspects of the defense industrial base,” he said. “But as a company, we decided to look at a couple of states to figure out which are those states that jump out for importance and criticality for the national defense industrial base that most people aren’t necessarily thinking about. So, for example, people think about missiles and they think about like factories outside of Los Angeles, or they think about SpaceX in Texas. So there’s some states that are really well recognized for the defense industrial base, but there’s a lot of other states.
“And Pennsylvania is we think the most critical example where the parts, the materials, the companies, the systems that are manufactured here, you can’t have a national defense industrial base without it,” Conklin continued. “So that’s why we decided to look at Pennsylvania to figure out what are those companies, what are those systems that are used by the F-35, that are used by the missiles and the drones that are now being fired in Ukraine or being used to support the submarine operations are happening globally for nuclear deterrence. So a lot of those companies are small and medium, and they’re here, and they’re they’re they’re not well known, they’re not well understood. But that’s why we decided to do the report.”
Pennsylvania’s importance is not solely focused on the big cities, such as Philly and Pittsburgh, nor just located around military bases such as Indiantown Gap or Letterkenny.
“I think this is such a magical thing about Pennsylvania as a state, where you have historic manufacturing facilities all over the state,” said Conklin. “If you think about like 155 howitzer cannons, those big artillery shells that are fired constantly, right? Those are made in one manufacturing facility located in the eastern or the western side of the state. But you have the labs like AI Labs and Carnegie Mellon. You’ve got all the normal universities and and research institutes in the bigger cities. But the smaller and medium-sized companies that exist that do the forging, the casting, the really important blocking and tackling aspects, the defense industrial base. Those aren’t located in the big cities.
“So this is a system that is unique in Pennsylvania because of how history has essentially enabled these types of steel manufacturing, like this old school manufacturing capability that Pennsylvania is famous for people just aren’t thinking about how that type of capability is now supporting those military systems.”
Exiger used an AI-powered analysis to discover new insights into the Commonwealth’s defense economy and supply chains. The report identifies strategic opportunities for Pennsylvania in defense tech, defense production, space, and raw materials.
“I think the sheer number of parts that are made in Pennsylvania that are critical that you can’t replace,” said Conklin about the biggest takeaway from the report. For a lot of these components, hundreds and hundreds of these factories that are just small and medium businesses in Pennsylvania, if they go down, the entire national defense ecosystem stops.”
He mentioned the recent fire in Jonestown at SBS Technologies and its impact that stretches far beyond Lebanon County.
“When a manufacturing facility like that goes down in Pennsylvania, the ripple effect slows down what our warfighters can get in the conflict with Iran, or for example, what we can provide to the Ukrainians to fight the invasion of Iraq,” he said. “So that that fire in Pennsylvania has a ripple effect that goes way, way, way, way, way beyond Pennsylvania border.”
The importance of manufacturing in the state, especially in the boroughs and small communities, is not lost on Conklin.
“It’s sometimes easy to forget that the facility that you’re driving by makes a widget, that you just don’t necessarily know what’s happening inside of that factory,” he said. “But that role that factory could play in a small town in Pennsylvania to the broader national security of the United States, it’s almost impossible to overstate. We try to outline some of the examples in the report. But I think from a political perspective, it’s important for local leaders and state level leaders to be aware of how much is taking place in the state.”
President Donald Trump will attend the Summit and participate in a roundtable on Wednesday.