Posted on 08/09/2026 8:05:26 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
The Pentagon is pressing the U.S. defense industry to accelerate production of weapons to help replenish its diminished stockpile of munitions, including those depleted in the ongoing war with Iran.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Saturday that the department was actively focused on boosting munitions acquisitions to provide “the weapons our warfighters need at the pace the threat demands.” He confirmed department efforts in the last week to significantly speed the process but insisted it was part of a broader modernization effort that predated the five-month-old conflict.
Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote to industry leaders on Wednesday, giving them no more than 21 days to submit plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
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Thankfully we have years of a headstart to this process because of Russia’s invasion in Europe, the budgets and contracts, and construction of new plants and remodels of old ones, the restructuring and repair of supply systems, all have been going on for years here, in Europe, and in the Pacific nations, all helpful time passed to a process that takes years to see fruition, and something that needed doing well before February, 2022.
"After"??
AP BS.
There is no diminished stockpile of munitions, not a single one.
IIRC, we were revving up production a long time ago...
Could it be AP that the weapons the Pentagon is asking for are new? You learn lessons from war, adapt, and develop new and improved tools of war. Those tools can never get her fast enough.
Nah, what am I saying, our soldiers will be using slings soon because we are out of munitions.
By the way, our pro-Russia/North Korea in the invasion people have been very negative about all this increasing in American readiness stockpiles for years, mocking it and criticizing it, I wonder if they will support our improving readiness now?
“””””IIRC, we were revving up production a long time ago...”””””
Correct, see post 2.
“including those depleted in the ongoing war with Iran.”
I don’t want to give the AP clicks. Did they also mention all the weapons we have given to Ukraine? I bet not. Doesn’t fit the narrative.
Defense Production Act
This isn’t just a matter of hiring more people and opening a new assembly line. These systems require a lot of training to build.
Dumping our old stuff in Ukraine and seeing the high level of consumption in the war is what kicked off this new awareness in the first place, it is one of the big benefits the West and our global allies got from the invasion.
You don't press companies to accelerate, you give them orders.
Let me describe how companies think. As a young engineer I discovered that a simple change of resistor values on a critical Strategic Air Command device could greatly improve its terrible failure rate. The Air Force simply didn’t have the money at that time. The cost was changing the Bill Of Materials. We could improve all future shipments and update the other units as they returned. The paperwork cost was somewhere less than $2500 dollars, about a third of the cost of the average car at that time in eighties. The Program manager asked why we should do this if the AF didn’t have the funds to pay for it. (Mind you, this was the biggest military production contract Honeywell had at the time.) I suggested, “How about patriotism.” They laughed long and loud. The change was not made.
Breakdown of US Tax-financed Munitions Used Against Iran
Initial tracking data from regional conflicts and military analyses outline the specific scale of ordnance used in the primary waves of the campaign:
The initial 36-hour offensive utilized 120 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 210 JDAM precision-guided bomb kits, and 90 AGM-88 anti-radiation missiles subsidized by US tax dollars.
In the same early window, Israeli military launched 70 Rampage supersonic missiles, 50 Delilah cruise/loitering missiles, and roughly 280 Spice-guided bombs...financed by US taxpayers.
Overall Intensity was huge: In just the first 16 days of the 2026 offensive,
US, Israeli forces expended nearly 11,300 total munitions financed by US taxpayers.
ADDENDUM: current US assessments and reports indicate that
rather than Israel “expending” deep-strike tactical US missiles
Israel “conserved” much of its Israel-based US tax-financed high-end arsenal.
Ergo, US taxpayers absorbed the vast majority of offensive
and defensive missile expenditures in the bombardment of Iran.
There are big orders following the revolution in warfighting.
Drones. Counter drones. Swarm software. Satellites. Rocket startups. Energy weapons. Continuous wave lasers. Pulse lasers. Hypersonic missile motors. Robotic vehicles. GPS alternatives.
War Department wants multiple domestic sourcing so that we have surge capacity. No more single sourcing. Many of the new weapons are relatively cheap and expendable.
The not so subtle message is somebody expects war with China.
FTFY
The West dumping more GDP into weapons isn't actually a benefit to the people of the West, it's just more debt for something that doesn't improve our lives.
What’s the breakdown on what we’ve sent to Ukraine over the last half dozen years?
Bkmk
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