US President Donald Trump and senior Pentagon officials are seeking to solve the country’s munitions shortage by approaching the problem from two directions in meetings recently.
They urged defence companies to speed up the production of depleted weapons systems. And they pushed lawmakers to approve additional money to pay for the conflict against Iran, which caused the shortage.
It is likely to be an uphill battle.
In a meeting at the White House, defence companies told Trump they wanted more money to expand production, according to two officials with knowledge of the meeting.
Trump was more conciliatory than in past meetings and said his administration was working to secure more funding, one official said.
But his request for US$70bil to pay for the conflict is expected to face stiff opposition in Congress. The proposal needs bipartisan support in the Senate to advance, and nearly all Democrats have said they will not vote to fund a conflict they oppose.
At stake for the Pentagon is not necessarily its ability to continue the fight against Iran. Officials from the military’s Central Command insisted in interviews that they have everything they need should the president decide to restart hostilities.
But the Pentagon’s ability to prosecute future wars could be hobbled by a munitions shortage that might take years to reverse.
“The United States has enough munitions for any plausible scenario in the Iran conflict, but the depleted inventories have created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict,” the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said. “The time needed to rebuild those inventories has thus become a major concern.”
Adding to the Pentagon’s challenges is that some lawmakers in both parties are wary of the agreement that Trump struck with Iran to end the conflict and were mad that the president and the defence secretary started it in the first place.
“For months, the administration has failed to answer basic questions about its aims and justification for the Iran conflict and has failed to provide the most basic information about its costs,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
“This president is telling the American people there’s no money for healthcare, housing or childcare – but there should be endless taxpayer dollars to fund wars they don’t support,” she added.
The Pentagon’s insistence that the military already has everything it needs has further complicated its request for more money.
“In exchange for longer-term orders, defence contractors are now investing their own private capital in new manufacturing plants and assembly lines – putting hundreds of thousands of Americans to work and saving our department tens of billions,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an essay posted on the Pentagon’s website.
“Our warfighters will get the weapons, platforms and technology they need ahead of schedule – tomorrow’s weapons today, not yesterday’s weapons tomorrow,” he wrote. “Our newest programmes are now ahead of schedule and under budget, and we’ve got legacy programmes moving years faster.”
In actuality, the conflict against Iran drained the Pentagon’s arsenal. The United States burnt through around 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles, close to the total number remaining in the US stockpile.
The military also fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly 10 times the number it buys each year.
The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles in the conflict, at more than US$4mil apiece, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal Defence Department estimates and congressional officials.
To help address the shortages, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a bill in May that could bar some defence contractors from making stock buybacks or paying dividends to shareholders unless they first get approval from the Pentagon. The measure, if it passes, would be an extension of an executive order Trump issued in January.
Defence officials have long complained that companies prioritise paying dividends to shareholders over investing in new factories and equipment that can increase weapons production.
At the White House meeting with the defence manufacturers, Deputy Defence Secretary Steve Feinberg did most of the talking, according to people briefed on the conversation. He echoed Pentagon talking points that defence companies should be moving faster.
But the officials said the meeting was not confrontational, and defence companies said they would work to speed up production.
So far, there have been many announcements about plans to expand production, but little actual production expansion, industry officials say.
On Feb 4 – just more than three weeks before the United States and Israel attacked Iran – Raytheon said it would increase production of Tomahawk missiles to 1,000 per year, up from 90.
Pentagon officials have been pushing defence contractors for more than a year to look for non-traditional solutions, including working with the auto industry to leverage its experience in mass production.
Lockheed Martin and GM Defense, a subsidiary of General Motors that makes military vehicles, announced in May that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to explore ways to work together to increase the production of munitions, among other things.
Lockheed Martin chief operating officer Frank St John said teams from the two companies would get together to “look at what is the manufacturing challenge that we’re facing within the defence industrial base”. — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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