Pentagon urges faster US weapons production amid stockpile concerns

US defence manufacture pressed to boost output arsenic munitions shortages rise information concerns amid Middle East tensions.

The Pentagon has called connected the United States defence manufacture to accelerate accumulation of weapons to assistance replenish its diminished stockpile of munitions, including those depleted successful the ongoing warfare with Iran.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said successful a connection connected Saturday that the section was actively focused connected boosting munitions acquisitions to supply “the weapons our warfighters request astatine the gait the menace demands”. He confirmed the department’s efforts implicit the past week to importantly velocity up the process, but insisted it was portion of a broader modernisation effort that predated the five-month-old conflict.

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Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote to manufacture leaders connected Wednesday, giving them nary much than 21 days to taxable plans to “drive importantly faster, much assertive transportation schedules and/or accrued accumulation for captious capabilities,” according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.

“Years-long improvement cycles are not acceptable,” Feinberg wrote. “We indispensable dramatically accelerate our programme schedules and grow our accumulation capableness now.”

The memo comes arsenic recent fighting with Iran utilized up much of the US military’s already diminished stockpiles of precocious rocket interceptors. Experts accidental shortages successful some violative and antiaircraft weapons could permission US forces little secure.

Shrunken inventories of Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors whitethorn unit the US and its Middle Eastern allies to instrumentality greater risks to conserve those aerial defences, according to an investigation by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based deliberation tank. For example, it said, American forces whitethorn motorboat less missiles against incoming Iranian drones and missiles, raising the accidental of 1 getting through.

US President Donald Trump has bristled implicit nationalist reports of a munitions shortage. On Thursday, helium again denied that the US faced immoderate strategical disadvantage erstwhile it came to weapons stores aft 5 months of war.

“The US has monolithic amounts of ‘munitions,’ particularly of definite types,” Trump wrote connected his Truth Social account. He added that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the US arsenic needed” and that defence contractors are “building the largest fig of plants and factories successful our country’s history”.

On Saturday, Parnell affirmed that Feinberg’s memo seeking a accelerated escalation of weapons accumulation is “real,” adding that it “will pass the fiscal twelvemonth 2028 fund submitted to Congress for funding, and it is wholly accordant with our ongoing propulsion to rebuild the defence concern base.”

A defence spending measure is presently stalled successful the US Congress, with lawmakers fuming implicit Trump’s subject enactment against Iran and resisting the White House petition to substantially summation Pentagon spending to $1.5 trillion, up from astir $900bn past year. Experts person warned that adjacent with an influx of funding, it volition apt instrumentality astatine slightest 3 years to reconstruct Patriot and THAAD interceptors to pre-war levels.

The fig of Patriot interceptors fell from 2,330 earlier the warfare to 1,030 erstwhile the April ceasefire took effect, CSIS estimated past month. Following caller fighting, the stockpile is present estimated to beryllium betwixt 759 and 827, a alteration of astatine slightest 65 percent since earlier the struggle began.

The fig of THAAD interceptors fell from 452 earlier the warfare to betwixt 232 and 262 astatine the commencement of the April ceasefire, CSIS said. The US was capable to replenish immoderate of the inventory to betwixt 234 and 278 interceptors. But the stockpile is inactive astatine slightest 38 percent smaller than it was earlier the conflict.

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense penned a caller deal with defence giants Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman successful an effort to ramp up accumulation capableness for parts utilized successful rocket defence systems.

“We don’t person that galore [interceptors] left, and determination are nary bully substitutes,” retired US Marine Corps colonel Mark Cancian, 1 of the authors of the CSIS analysis, told Al Jazeera connected Wednesday. “If we tally retired of Patriots, past the missiles get through.”