President Donald Trump reportedly plans to press defense industry executives to ramp up missile production due to concerns about America’s dwindling supply.
Trump has privately expressed anger over the shrinking stockpile to his aides and allies, and a person familiar with the planned White House meeting said it was probably “going to be ugly,” NBC News said.
The leaders of about seven companies are preparing for the sit-down, which is also expected to include Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg and could take place this week, NBC News said.
The report came after the U.S. resumed strikes against Iran following Monday’s downing of an American military helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz. Trump threatened more attacks on Thursday, but hours later walked back those threats.
The White House told The Independent on Thursday that no meeting like the one described by NBC News had been scheduled.
In a statement to The Independent, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that the U.S. military “has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing.”
“We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests,” Parnell added.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly also told NBC News that the military was prepared “to serve all of President Trump’s strategic goals and beyond,” adding, “Even still, the President has urged our defense contractors to constantly produce more made-in-America weapons, which are the best in the world.”
Concerns over the U.S. missile stockpile have been mounting since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the latest war against Iran on Febuary 28.
In early March, Reuters reported that defense contractors including Lockheed Martin and the parent company of Raytheon had been invited to a White House meeting to discuss replacing weapons pulled from American stockpiles since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The following month, The New York Times reported that the military had fired more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles, each costing more than $4 million, since the start of the Iran war.
The Times also said the U.S. had used about 1,100 of the long-range stealth cruise missiles it’s stockpiled for a potential war with China, citing internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.
“At current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said at the time.
Also in April, the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said its analysis showed the U.S. had “enough missiles to continue fighting this war under any plausible scenario.”
“The risk — which will persist for many years — lies in future wars,” it said.
A late April report by The Atlantic also said Vice President JD Vance had “repeatedly questioned” during closed-door meetings whether the Pentagon was understating the depletion of U.S. missile stockpiles.
Vance challenged the accuracy of that report, telling Fox News, “ Nobody who actually knows what I think, nobody who’s close to me, was speaking to that reporter.”
“Of course I’m concerned about our readiness,” he also said, before adding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Dan “Raizin” Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “doing an amazing job.”
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