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OPINION — “We just concluded a very good meeting with the largest U.S. Defense Manufacturing Companies where we discussed Production and Production Schedules. They have agreed to quadruple Production of the ‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry in that we want to reach, as rapidly as possible, the highest levels of quantity. Expansion began three months prior to the meeting, and Plants and Production of many of these Weapons are already under way. We have a virtually unlimited supply of Medium and Upper Medium Grade Munitions, which we are using, as an example, in Iran, and recently used in Venezuela. Regardless, however, we have also increased Orders at these levels.”
That was President Trump in a Truth Social message last Friday afternoon following a White House meeting he had with the chief operating officers of BAE Systems, Boeing, Honeywell Aerospace, L3Harris Missile Solutions, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon – as he said, among the nation’s major defense contractors.
I’m focusing on Trump’s statement for two reasons. The first is that he admits the U.S. is running low on what he calls “Exquisite Class” weaponry, and although he doesn’t name them I will shortly describe a few, and add some Trump ignored.
But more important I want also to re-emphasize as I did last week that President Trump – for whatever reason – has suddenly turned his back on peaceful diplomacy as a way to settle international disagreements and, on his own, begun using the U.S. military first in the raid that grabbed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and now in a war against Iran that will cause untold numbers of dead and wounded and cost billions, if not trillions of dollars.
Ironically, his Friday meeting with top defense contractors took place at a time when he has announced plans to seek a dramatic 33 percent, $500 billion, increase in next year’s fiscal 2027 defense spending – to $1.5 trillion. That reminds me of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s last year need to put Russia on a wartime economy since his 2022 invasion of Ukraine has turned out to be more than a several week effort.
Like Putin, who has called his Ukraine invasion as a “special operation,” Trump for a time tried to refer to his attack on Iran as a military “operation” rather than a war. Trump often avoids saying it’s a war, probably because he has so far not sought nor received authorization from Congress.
Trump’s goal, however, has never been as clear as Putin’s – which was to restore Moscow’s total control over the Kyiv government. Trump has swung from preventing Tehran from having a nuclear weapon to possessing no ballistic missiles to regime change and back again.
One big difference from Putin is that Trump has Israel as an active partner and neither he nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to put their own troops on the ground in Iran.
But there could be a time when Trump and Netanyahu differ on continuing these full scale attacks on Iran from the air.
That may be where the question of munitions comes into play, at least for the U.S. What Trump referred to as “Exquisite Class” weapons, whose production Trump said need to be quadrupled, are among the offensive and defensive systems being employed in the Iran fighting.
For example. during last Thursday’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event on the Iraq War, Tom Karako, director of the CSIS Missile Defense Project, identified what I believe are among the very “Exquisite Class” weapons Trump wants quadrupled in production.
The three systems Karako talked about were the Terminal High Altitude Terminal Defense (THAAD) used to destroy short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles inside and outside the atmosphere; the Patriot missile system whose PAC-3 MSE interceptors destroy tactical ballistic and cruise missiles as well as aircraft; and Tomahawk long-range, up to 1,500 miles, subsonic, offensive cruise missiles
Speaking about Friday’s White House meeting between the President and defense contractors, Karako said, “Our estimates of what our inventories need to be for our various contingencies are dramatically too low.” Karako based that on what the U.S. contributed to the Ukraine war, used over past years against the Houthis in engagements in the Red Sea and Yemen, and as the U.S. Operation Midnight Hammer, part of Israel’s 12-day war against Iran last June.
Karako went on to say, independent of current fighting, “They [meaning the Trump administration] want to go from about 96 THAADs a year to 400. They want to go from 650 [PAC-3] MSEs to over 2,000 MSEs a year – factory MSE. They want to go from – I think we requested 57 Tomahawks last year [to over 1,000].”
Karako added, “Fifty-seven. Like, that’s what we use in an afternoon on just sort of mowing the lawn with terrorist strikes sometimes. [Deputy Defense] Secretary [Stephen] Feinberg wants to go to over 1,000 Tomahawks per year. That is the munitions ramp that we have been waiting for.”
I should point out the long-term agreement with Lockheed-Martin to increase PAC-3 MSE production calls for a guaranteed level for purchases from the Pentagon for interceptors, which allows the company to invest in expanding capacity, including adding workers, advanced tooling, and upgrading facilities.
Increased production doesn’t happen overnight. Lockheed-Martin has estimated it will reach the goal of 2,000 by 2030.
On Wednesday, Michael P. Duffey, Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment told the House Armed Services Committee of the agreement with Lockheed Martin to quadruple the annual production capacity of THAAD interceptors. The company said it is planning a multi-billion-dollar investment over the next three years to expand THAAD production, which today occupies more than 340,000 square feet of production space and employs over 2,000 to support component fabrication to final assembly.
As for Tomahawk cruise missiles, Duffey said the Raytheon division of RTX agreed within the next few years to increase production capacity to 1,000. In the past, it has taken up to two years to build a single Tomahawk because of its complex, specialized components.
According to media sources, the military had over 4,000 Tomahawks before the attacks on Iran began. Within the first three days, some 400 Tomahawks were used against Iranian targets.
Then there is the cost of Trump’s Iran war. Elaine McCusker, former Deputy Under Secretary Defense (Comptroller) in the first Trump administration and now at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Wall Street Journal last week that in the first four days she estimated the cost at $11 billion of which $5.7 billion was for fired interceptors and another $3.4 billion for bombs and missiles.
With talk circulating last week that the White House was preparing a supplemental bill of up to $50 billion to pay for the Iran war costs, House Speaker Mike Johnson last Wednesday told reporters he hadn’t heard yet about a specific funding level, but that “we’ll pass a supplemental when it’s appropriate and get it right.”
Meanwhile, President Trump continues to change and even raise the goals of his Iran bombing offensive.
When it began, February 28, he called it a campaign to “eliminate the imminent nuclear threat,” and to gain “freedom” for the Iranian people. By last Friday, Trump was asserting in a Truth Social message the expansive “there will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader.”
As I wrote in my most recent column of Trump, “The man who just months ago saw his future as chairman of an international Board of Peace, now looks like he might rather be a rogue Policeman of the World.”
This past Sunday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff, writing about the Iran war, quoted former-Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark), in when Fulbright was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kristoff wrote that in 1966 Fulbright wrote that the U.S. role in the Vietnam War – which he opposed – represented “the arrogance of power.” Fulbright had added, “Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.”
I ran two Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigations in the 1960s for Sen. Fulbright, including one on the use and misuse of American military power abroad.
I can confidently say that a Chairman Fulbright would by now have voiced public opposition into Trump’s Iran war and initiated a thorough Foreign Relations Committee investigation into how it came about and how it could be brought to an end. Fulbright then would schedule public hearings so that everyone, here and abroad, would have an opportunity to know what was going on.
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