larry johnson gives us an idea of the corner we've painted the empire into;

 

The Trump administration, following several media reports of a plague of weapons shortages, is trying to launch a frantic effort to reload. After two wars — Ukraine and the 2026 conflict with Iran — burned through interceptor stockpiles at a rate no peacetime industrial base was built to sustain, the Pentagon is moving with unusual speed and unusual money in an attempt to rapidly rebuild its most important air-defense munition. In late July, the U.S. Army awarded Lockheed Martin a multiyear PAC-3 production contract reported at roughly $53.9 billion, part of a framework meant to lift annual output of the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) interceptor from about 600 missiles to 2,000 by 2030. It is one of the largest missile-production commitments in American history.

There is only one tiny problem that the contract cannot fix with money alone — The PAC-3’s guidance system — the part that makes a hit-to-kill interceptor actually hit — depends on two rare-earth inputs whose supply is almost entirely controlled by China. Washington is pressing its defense primes to more than triple output of a weapon whose most irreplaceable components sit at the far end of a supply chain that runs through Beijing. The ambition and the vulnerability are growing at the same time, and they are on a collision course..........more..........