Why the Pentagon Is Quadrupling Missile Production, and Why It Still Won't Be Enough
David Kowalski · April 1, 2026 · 11 min readHere is a number worth sitting with: at peak consumption during the early months of support to Ukraine, the United States was shipping Javelin anti-tank missiles faster than Lockheed Martin could build them. Within ten months, the Stinger man-portable air defense inventory, a weapon system that took decades to accumulate, was functionally depleted. Over 7,000 Javelins, roughly one-third of the entire U.S. stockpile, were transferred before the Pentagon paused shipments to protect its own readiness.
That was a proxy conflict. The missiles were not being fired by American forces. And yet the drawdown was severe enough to trigger what has become the largest guided-munitions production expansion since the Cold War.
On March 25, 2026, the Department of Defense announced a sweeping set of production agreements with Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, and Honeywell, deals designed to quadruple output of some of America's most critical missile systems over the next seven years. Earlier, on February 4, RTX (formerly Raytheon) had signed five separate agreements to dramatically scale Tomahawk and SM-6 production. The combined effort represents tens of billions in investment and a fundamental restructuring of the defense industrial base.
The ambition is real. The question is whether it is remotely sufficient. . . .
https://militarymachine.com/pentagon-missile-production-surge-2026
