Findings from AIA and PwC’s executive survey

State of the Ramp: Aerospace and defense production ramp readiness

July 2026

Scott Thompson

Global Aerospace and Defense Leader, PwC US

Aaron Cooke

Director, Aerospace and Defense, PwC US

Ashley Ransom

Director, Aerospace and Defense, PwC US

Key takeaways:

The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry is facing a defining challenge in scaling production to meet rapidly rising demand.
Defense budgets are injecting hundreds of billions to ramp the industrial base (DIB) for what’s billed as a new “Arsenal of Freedom” against a backdrop of commercial aircraft backlogs stretching 10+ years and massive space economy growth.
This swell in funding and investment likely won’t be enough to meet surging demand unless broad swaths of the A&D industrial base are redesigned and expanded for this herculean task.

The ramp needs a revamp. The industry can stretch for incremental growth, but scaling to surge demand will require stronger demand signals, deeper value chain visibility and coordination, targeted capital, and design of products and production systems for scalability from the start.

To understand the industry’s readiness, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and PwC surveyed senior executives across defense, commercial aviation, and space – spanning primes, sub-tier suppliers, and services/MRO providers. The responses provide a compelling view into problems and potential solutions for industry leaders, capital allocators, and policymakers.

Key findings:

Confidence in ramp readiness falls off at 2x: At 1.25x current production rates, 85% of the executives say they can deliver within 18 months. Beyond 2x, that confidence falls by nearly half. By 3-4x current rates, a concerning 33-42% share of the industrial base cannot or will not deliver on any timeline.
Forecasts bullwhip downstream: Demand signals distort and sub-tier visibility degrades down the value chain, with 36% of companies at the top of the value chain reporting under-forecasting, versus 72% at the bottom reporting over-forecasting. Suppliers must weigh committing capacity ahead of firm demand carefully, often in sub-tiers where binding constraints sit.
Cost and capacity must be solved for together: Scarcity of skilled technicians and aerospace‑grade metals/components are pressuring gross margins and throttling capacity simultaneously, so profitability and scalability will be inextricably linked. Nontraditional levers like workforce equity or throughput-based incentives and supply‑chain restructuring warrant consideration by incumbents and new entrants alike.
Playbooks still favor diversification; structural moves are the emerging frontier: The prevailing supply chain playbook still leans on fast, low‑capital de‑risking, like adding second sources, exiting weak suppliers, and locking volume through LTAs. Capital-intensive structural moves have remained largely in reserve, though vertical integration is emerging as a noteworthy exception. LTAs are a foundation, but sub‑tiers report needing hard capital and risk‑sharing to build the 2x+ capacity volume forecasts alone cannot underwrite.
Capital is not evenly available: OEM/primes are well-funded for the ramp, but critical downstream suppliers often are not. Federal programs are available but stall before reaching constrained sub-tiers, which still rely predominantly on more risk-averse private capital sources. Opportunity exists in extending funding-certainty and federal vehicle accessibility downstream.
Products, processes, and operating models should be designed for scalability: Across A&D, competitive advantage is rebalancing from products themselves to the ability to mass‑produce them, and many companies are redirecting budgets and investment priorities accordingly. As capital is deployed, firms are thinking carefully before scaling existing value chains if plagued by operational issues like poor yields or unreliable supply, as well as prioritizing flexible cross-program production assets and tooling. There is also upside opportunity in maturing digital enterprise tools and processes as core elements of an integrated ramp agenda.

The findings highlight A&D ramp readiness as primarily an end-to-end visibility, coordination, execution, and resource allocation problem. Volume expectations are rising to surge levels, but the systems required to convert that demand into output remain uneven. Over the coming years, this ramp will separate companies that produce only marginally more from those that re-tool themselves to supercharge scale. The winners, and likely those the market rewards, will gear their enterprise operating model for ramp readiness.

Accomplishing this will require several imperatives:

Value chain restructuring: The aggressive pursuit of control, leverage, and/or partnerships in strategic production capabilities to improve demand responsiveness, iteration cycle speed, and resilience to shocks.
Program intelligence: The end-to-end visibility required to predict and manage risk and financial performance real-time in a complex value chain, using AI to harness proprietary data, supplier inputs, and API-accessible market signals.
Relentless execution: A bias for action and willingness to do things differently, driving a portfolio of high-ROI “capacity unlock” initiatives that both squeeze existing lines and fast-track capital projects coming online.
Ramp-ready operating model and integrated business rhythm: Enterprise governance geared to drive accountability, coordination across functions and value chain nodes, process discipline, and faster, better decision-making from the shop floor to the C-suite.

Companies that embrace these principles have the ability to run factories and suppliers as one system, expose constraints with real-time enterprise data, and keep production plans, capacity commitments, and material orders aligned to the same demand signal, cadence, and escalation path. This can also help confirm that funding and resources flow to critical pinch points long before a line goes down. Demonstrating scalability fast can jump start the flywheel for further contract awards and growth. Getting there will mean moving past the hesitancy, risk-hedging, and traditional approaches still predominant in the system today – remnants of a fundamentally steadier, lower volume era – or risk falling behind more scalable, resilient, ambitious peers. Firms that move decisively on their integrated ramp strategy will set the pace for growth.