After a decade of steadily rising outlays for military technology and technical services, the defense sector is entering a period of softening demand.

Speculation about how deep and protracted the downturn will be has become a commonplace activity among strategic planners, investors and analysts. While nobody can be sure where the sector is headed — especially given the Intelligence Community’s weak track record in predicting threats — demand for military goods and services appears to have followed a distinctly cyclical pattern since the modern defense industry first emerged in the 1950s.

The persistence of this pattern, combined with several secular trends outside the defense sector likely to impact demand there, makes prediction of future developments something more than a fool’s errand.

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