chief strategy and global affairs officer<\/a> 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\u201cThere are thousands of companies all over the country that support various aspects of the defense industrial base,\u201d he said. \u201cBut 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\u2019t 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\u2019s some states that are really well recognized for the defense industrial base, but there\u2019s a lot of other states. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Pennsylvania is we think the most critical example where the parts, the materials, the companies, the systems that are manufactured here, you can\u2019t have a national defense industrial base without it,\u201d Conklin continued. \u201cSo that\u2019s 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\u2019re here, and they\u2019re they\u2019re they\u2019re not well known, they\u2019re not well understood. But that\u2019s why we decided to do the report.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is such a magical thing about Pennsylvania as a state, where you have historic manufacturing facilities all over the state,\u201d said Conklin. \u201cIf 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\u2019ve 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\u2019t located in the big cities. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo 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\u2019t thinking about how that type of capability is now supporting those military systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exiger used an AI-powered analysis to discover new insights into the Commonwealth\u2019s defense economy and supply chains. The report identifies strategic opportunities for Pennsylvania in defense tech, defense production, space, and raw materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the sheer number of parts that are made in Pennsylvania that are critical that you can\u2019t replace,\u201d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
He mentioned the recent fire in Jonestown at SBS Technologies and its impact that stretches far beyond Lebanon County.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that that fire in Pennsylvania has a ripple effect that goes way, way, way, way, way beyond Pennsylvania border.\u201d<\/p>\n
The importance of manufacturing in the state, especially in the boroughs and small communities, is not lost on Conklin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sometimes easy to forget that the facility that you\u2019re driving by makes a widget, that you just don\u2019t necessarily know what\u2019s happening inside of that factory,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that role that factory could play in a small town in Pennsylvania to the broader national security of the United States, it\u2019s almost impossible to overstate. We try to outline some of the examples in the report. But I think from a political perspective, it\u2019s important for local leaders and state level leaders to be aware of how much is taking place in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump will attend the Summit and participate in a roundtable on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During Tuesday\u2019s opening day of the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit in Carlisle, Sen. Dave McCormick made it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-243315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}