The Pentagon is preparing for a possible conflict with China and demands quadruple of missile and ammunition production
Patriot Patriot Rocket System: Facebook – MAPN
The Pentagon exerts pressure on American defense companies to double or increase their missile production even four times, to prepare for a possible conflict with China, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
A number of meetings took place in the last weeks between representatives of the Pentagon and the leaders of several missile producers, notes News.ro.
The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the chief of the General Staff, General Dan Caine, participated in a round table in June.
This initiative – called the Council of Acceleration of Munition – is headed by the Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg.
“President (American Donald) Trump and Secretary (Defense Pete) Hegseth explore extraordinary ways to strengthen our military power and accelerate ammunition production,” said WSJ a Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell.
After the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, in February 2022, American military officials are worried about the American capacity to rapidly relaunch weapon production chains.
The United States fired, during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran hundreds of sophisticated missiles, significantly reducing their stocks.
12 types of armament
In total, 12 armament times are in the center of this project, inclusive anti-air-airways, but especially the Patriot air defense system, which has proven its efficiency in both Israel and Ukraine in recent years.
However, at present, the builder of the Patriot system, Lockheed Martin, is increasingly difficult to face the growing demand of this very efficient system.
Within three years, the period 2024-2026, Lockheed Martin would produce 2,000 PAC-3 missiles, but the Pentagon wants to reach this annual volume.
Washington wants to be able to have additional interceptors to defend the foundations of its allies in the Asia-Pacific region.
Analysts are afraid that terms are unrealistic
Government officials and persons outside the Executive are afraid that the objectives are unrealistic, writes WSJ, in the context in which the complete rocket assembly can take two years.
Tests and certification of new weapons can also take several months and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
In July, Trump signed the “Great and Beautiful Law”, which allocated $ 25 billion in addition to ammunition over the next five years.
But some US military analysts estimate that it takes tens of billions of dollars to achieve these goals.
The largest companies in the defense industry, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, have already reacted, recruiting, increasing their factories and increasing their stock parts, in anticipating an increase in demand.
But others are difficult in achieving these goals and hesitates to invest massively, because the government has not allocated new funds.
