Fortunes in Formation: Positioning Texas to Capture America's Defense and Aerospace Economy

The United States Department of Defense does not distribute its contracts charitably. It awards them to states and regions that can demonstrate the infrastructure, the workforce, the supply chain depth, and the regulatory predictability that major defense programs demand. The competition is real, it is ongoing, and the economic stakes for the states that win — and lose — are measured in the tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Texas is a serious competitor. But serious competition requires more than geography and good intentions. It requires governance that matches the ambition.

The Scale of the Opportunity

The numbers involved in federal defense and aerospace contracting are difficult to fully appreciate without pausing to consider their scope. The Department of Defense's annual procurement budget exceeds $400 billion. NASA's commercial partnerships and aerospace development programs add additional billions. The Space Force, established in 2019 and growing rapidly in both budget and operational complexity, represents a new and expanding frontier for contract competition.

For individual states, capturing even a modest share of this spending can be transformative. A single major aircraft production contract can sustain a manufacturing ecosystem for decades, generating not only direct employment but an intricate network of supplier relationships, engineering services, and specialized logistics operations that anchor regional economies against cyclical volatility.

Texas already participates meaningfully in this competition. The state is home to significant defense installations, established aerospace manufacturing operations, and a workforce with deep roots in the technical disciplines that defense programs require. But participation and dominance are different things, and the gap between them represents an opportunity that current leadership has not fully pursued.

Where Texas Stands Today

The Texas defense and aerospace ecosystem is substantial by any objective measure. The state hosts major military installations — Fort Cavazos, Joint Base San Antonio, Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, and Dyess Air Force Base among them — that collectively represent one of the largest concentrations of defense infrastructure in the nation. Lockheed Martin's F-35 production facility in Fort Worth is among the most strategically significant manufacturing operations in the Western world. Bell's helicopter development and production operations in the Dallas–Fort Worth area represent decades of accumulated expertise and supply chain development.

Texas institutions graduate engineers, computer scientists, and systems specialists at a rate that should make the state an obvious destination for defense contractors seeking technical talent. The University of Texas system, Texas A&M, and a network of strong regional engineering programs produce graduates who are well-prepared for the demands of modern defense work.

And yet, competing states continue to win contracts that Texas should be pursuing more aggressively. Virginia, California, and Connecticut maintain advantages in certain defense sectors that are partly historical and partly the product of more deliberate state-level engagement with the contracting ecosystem.

The Barriers That Must Be Addressed

Understanding why Texas underperforms its potential in defense contracting requires an honest assessment of the obstacles that exist within the state's own policy environment.

Permitting and infrastructure development timelines present one significant challenge. Major defense programs require specialized facilities — secure manufacturing environments, testing ranges, logistics infrastructure — that must be built or modified to program specifications. When permitting processes are slow or unpredictable, program managers at defense contractors and at the Pentagon itself factor that uncertainty into their siting decisions. A state that can demonstrate rapid, reliable permitting for defense-related construction holds a meaningful competitive advantage.

Workforce pipeline alignment represents a second area requiring attention. The defense sector's technical requirements are specific and evolving rapidly. Cybersecurity, advanced materials engineering, autonomous systems development, and space operations demand skill sets that must be cultivated deliberately through educational partnerships and industry collaboration. Texas community colleges and technical institutions have the capacity to serve this function, but they require clear signals from state government about where investment should be directed.

Finally, the coordination between state economic development agencies, military installation commands, and private sector contractors could be substantially more effective. States that win consistently in defense contracting tend to have institutionalized relationships between these stakeholders — relationships that facilitate information sharing, accelerate decision-making, and present a unified, credible case to federal program managers.

McKennon's Strategic Framework

McKennon has identified federal defense and aerospace contracting as a priority economic development target, and his policy framework addresses the barriers described above with specificity rather than generality.

On permitting reform, McKennon advocates for the creation of an expedited review pathway for defense-related construction and facility modification projects. This is not a relaxation of standards — it is a recognition that when national security infrastructure is involved, the state has an affirmative interest in moving quickly and that existing timelines do not reflect that interest.

On workforce development, McKennon supports expanded state investment in defense-sector training programs at Texas community colleges and technical institutes, paired with formal partnership agreements with major contractors that align curriculum to actual hiring needs. The goal is to create a pipeline that is responsive to the defense industry's evolving requirements rather than trailing them by years.

On institutional coordination, McKennon envisions a dedicated defense and aerospace economic development office within state government — staffed by individuals with genuine understanding of the contracting process — that can serve as a consistent, knowledgeable interlocutor between Texas's assets and the federal programs that allocate contracts.

The Strategic Argument

Beyond the economic case, there is a strategic argument for Texas leadership in defense and aerospace that deserves to be stated plainly. The United States faces a security environment of genuine complexity — a peer competitor in China, an aggressive revisionist power in Russia, and a proliferating array of non-state threats that demand sustained technological investment. The defense industrial base that supports American military capability is a national asset, and its geographic distribution matters.

Concentrating that industrial base in a small number of states creates fragility. Distributing it across a broader array of economically capable, politically stable, and workforce-rich states creates resilience. Texas — with its energy resources, its geographic advantages, its workforce depth, and its demonstrated commitment to the economic conditions that allow industry to function — is a natural anchor for a more distributed and therefore more durable defense industrial base.

The $47 billion question is not really a question at all. It is an invitation. Texas has everything required to answer it decisively. What is needed now is leadership willing to pursue that answer with the same determination that has characterized the state's approach to every other economic challenge it has chosen to take seriously.

McKennon's platform offers exactly that — a clear-eyed assessment of what Texas must do differently, paired with the policy instruments to make it happen. The window for competitive advantage in defense and aerospace is open. The only genuine risk is failing to walk through it.