(José Niño, Headline USA) The White House has summoned top Pentagon brass and chief executives from the nation’s premier defense firms to a Wednesday meeting focused on rebuilding American weapons reserves that shrank dramatically during combat operations, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Deputy War Secretary Stephen Feinberg contacted industry executives earlier this month instructing them prepare themselves for discussions that insiders anticipate will prove contentious. The gathering was originally slated for June 11 or 12 but shifted due to ongoing diplomacy aimed at concluding the Iran war.
Fighting with Iran rapidly consumed American missile inventories, prompting Donald Trump to demand that manufacturers speed up efforts to replenish stocks. Senior military figures expressed concerns about how quickly forces depleted missiles and interceptors throughout the campaign. Trump cautioned that airstrikes would resume should diplomatic efforts collapse.
Speaking from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump commended defense companies for building new production facilities. He disclosed that automakers have begun participating in weapons manufacturing.
“Some of the car companies, if they have any excess capacity, they’re making a deal to build missiles,” Trump said.
The Journal earlier reported that General Motors opened discussions with Lockheed Martin about supplying standard components to help defense firms ramp up munitions output.
War Department officials secured preliminary commitments from top arms producers earlier this year to substantially increase manufacturing of vital weapons systems such as Patriot interceptors and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Yet these firms continue to wait for full appropriations for the agreements while Congress and the administration wrangle over military spending legislation.
“Meetings are great, but they’re not contracts. To do contracts you have to have money and money requires appropriations,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Feinberg and executives from Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, and Honeywell Aerospace are anticipated to participate.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly asserted that the Pentagon has “more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump’s strategic goals and beyond.” She conceded that Trump “has urged our defense contractors to constantly produce more made-in-America weapons, which are the best in the world.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated that “America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing.”
Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet described the appropriations logjam during a recent investor presentation. “We have to go from kind of a term sheet…to something called undefinitized contract action with the government, which enables us to start actually spending money legally in a way that will be committed to by the government,” he said. “Appropriations are required to go through Congress to get the full contract.”
The War Department’s fiscal 2027 budget submission seeks congressional approval for $52.9 billion to expand production of 12 “critical munitions” encompassing Patriot, Standard Missile, and Thaad interceptors. A significant portion of those requested funds remains trapped inside a $350 billion reconciliation bill encountering resistance in Congress.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
