WASHINGTON: The US military has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $58.6 billion to produce Patriot interceptor missiles, the Pentagon said Wednesday, as conflicts in Iran and Ukraine deplete US weapons stockpiles.
The United States has supplied large quantities of weapons to its allies while also using munitions in its own military operations in Iran, raising concerns about inventories of key air defense and precision-guided weapons.
Lockheed’s award converts a previous one-year deal worth $4.7 billion awarded in April into a seven-year draft agreement, creating a multi-year acquisition plan for the interceptors from fiscal year 2026 to 2032, the Army said.
Pentagon negotiators are pushing contractors to move much faster, and tentative production deals reached earlier this year are at the center of efforts to ramp up missile production. President Donald Trump’s administration has also steadily increased pressure on defense contractors to prioritize production over payments to shareholders. Trump signed an executive order in January to identify contractors deemed to be performing poorly on government contracts while continuing to distribute profits to shareholders.
Industry executives have welcomed the production agreements, but said Congress must first allocate funds before companies can invest more in components and production capacity.
The exact terms and delivery dates of many Pentagon munitions deals are still being negotiated.
A similar framework agreement had been reached with Raytheon’s parent company, RTX, to boost production of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the current rate of about 60 per year in the United States to eventually 1,000 units per year.
Lockheed, a Bethesda, Maryland-based defense contractor, said the funding would allow it to fulfill its promise to triple PAC-3 MSE production capacity by the end of 2030 and increase jobs at its Camden, Arkansas, plant by 50%, from 1,200 to about 1,850. Lockheed previously announced that production of the Patriot PAC-3 missile interceptor would reach 2,000 units per year.
Lockheed Martin said it is investing $8 billion to $9 billion through 2030 to modernize more than 20 U.S. facilities, including new munitions centers in Alabama and Arkansas.
PAC-3 MSE is a deadly strike interceptor used within the Patriot air defense system to counter ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, estimated this week that the U.S. military has fewer than 1,000 Patriot interceptors available and fewer than 250 THAAD interceptors, two key air defense systems. Both have seen heavy use recently in the Middle East.
