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The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $12 million contract to Zone 5 Technologies to advance manufacturing technology for the Rusty Dagger program, a fast-moving effort to produce affordable, mass-scale long-range strike missiles that has moved from program launch to potential combat employment in roughly two years. The contract, awarded June 18, 2026, by the […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has placed its first order under a new vehicle contract with Polaris Government and Defense, buying more than 70 MRZR Alpha ultra-light tactical vehicles along with a suite of mission-specific accessories, with more than half of the vehicles configured to export 5 kilowatts of electrical power directly from the vehicle itself. […]View the full article

I don’t know about you, but I really want to hear your garden-variety journalist read this from the teleprompter. Türkiye will host a NATO Summit in Ankara on 7- 8 July 2026. The meeting will be chaired by the NATO Secretary General and will take place at the Beştepe Presidential Compound (T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Külliyesi) in Ankara, Türkiye. As we stand by for the summit, I am going to watch who writes “Turkey” like a proper English speaker, or “Türkiye” like a compromised low-T drone scared of its shadow. OK, enough of me being unserious and petty. Let’s dive into the important things. If you don’t have a NATO background, you might not be anticipating much, but that would be a mistake. Big changes can come out of these things. NATO summit meetings are effectively meetings of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) – the Alliance’s principal political decision-making body – at its highest level, that of Heads of State and Government. Due to the political significance of summit meetings, agenda items typically address issues of overarching political or strategic importance. Items can relate to the internal functioning of the Alliance as well as NATO’s relations with external partners. Major decisions Many of NATO’s summit meetings were milestones in the evolution of the Alliance. For instance, the first post-Cold War summit was held in London, in 1990, and outlined proposals for developing relations with Central and Eastern European countries. A year later, in Rome, NATO Heads of State and Government published a Strategic Concept that reflected the new security environment. This was the first time ever that a NATO Strategic Concept was issued as a public document. At the same summit, NATO established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council – a forum that officially brought together NATO and partner countries from Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus. If you want to know why all the NATO organs continue to not understand the below: You have to understand that it came out of the 360 Degree Approach, a sloppy compromise from the 2016 Warsaw and 2022 Madrid summits as a sop to NATO’s southern-tier members. Pay attention. Most times, the agenda is set well ahead of the summit and the decisions are already set before everyone shows up…but these are exceptional times. There might be a surprise. If you want to see if anything is leaking out ahead of time, you need to look at traditional Atlanticist institutions to see what they’re saying. Let’s pick a couple, starting with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who, to their great credit, use “Turkey.” Allies will gather in Ankara, Turkey, this July at a critical moment. NATO faces a war in Europe, renewed instability in the Middle East, and growing internal tension over priorities, burdens, and risk. NATO has endured disputes before, but a lack of unity—if left unmanaged—can weaken deterrence as effectively as military shortfalls. As Wallace Thies suggests, crisis begins when members become indifferent to sustaining the alliance. By that definition, NATO is under strain—but not yet in crisis—despite reporting that the United States will reassess the value of NATO after its war with Iran. In a more contested international order, the benefits to the United States of remaining in NATO continue to outweigh the costs, particularly as Europe is stepping up to deliver what U.S. officials have termed “NATO 3.0”—a more European NATO in which allies assume greater responsibility for their own defense. The question, therefore, is not whether NATO should endure, but how it should adapt. A modern update to Ismay’s dictum would be for NATO to keep the Americans committed, the Europeans capable, and the Russians contained. That, my friends, is an almost perfect pair of paragraphs. From Washington’s perspective, the argument is familiar: Europe benefits from global stability underwritten by U.S. power and should shoulder more of the burden when that stability is threatened. President Trump has criticized Europe by suggesting the continent was absent when it mattered, and that it does not truly share the sacrifice. Europeans will push back: Tens of thousands of European troops served in Afghanistan over two decades, hundreds died, and the commitment was sustained long after public support had eroded at home. This complicates the free‑rider narrative and risks undermining cooperation. From Europe, the picture looks different. The Iran campaign was launched without allied consultation, rests on contested legal and strategic grounds, and risks diverting attention and resources away from Ukraine. For European leaders already engaged in a difficult domestic debate over sustained defense spending, another major Middle Eastern war is a significant political complication—not a rallying point. That is a fair enough description of the state of play between alliance friends. Over the last two years, all but a couple have made the push to significantly increase defense spending. BZ to them, and the end of the quote above is correct. Some nations will not push more, as their political system won’t make the effort. On the whole though you have to give a thumbs up, progress has been made. This is a good time to jump ahead to a superior product by the Atlantic Council. They have a NATO Defense Spending Tracker that has a couple of new graphics describing allied spending different than the usual bar graph I’ve been referencing over the years. I’ll show you what I mean. Old Line members of the Front Porch have gotten used to the usual pushback we’ve received for the last couple of decades about why 2% of GDP was not “fair”, or that it wasn’t a “nuanced” understanding, small nations blah, blah, blah. My first retort has always been that with friends and neighbors, when work needs to be done that benefits all, everyone is expected to do their fair share. No one expects the 5’2” single mother on public assistance to underwrite lunch for everyone, but if she brings a squash casserole, everyone will be thankful. The beefy guys would never expect her to help move logs, but they’ll be happy to get the other big fellows to help with that. What no one wants, is to deal with the trust fund baby sitting on a chair in the shade, having a smoke while everyone works. The below does a good job in showing who is contributing their fair share—from the stingy on the bottom right, to the best effort in the upper left-hand corner. Our alliance has rich members and poor members. The next graphic isn’t fair in that regard, and I like it the least, but it tells a story. Also, the U.S. defense budget is not too big. Nope. We need to up these numbers. We have more military obligations than many of these European nations. When looked at from that perspective, we are seriously underspending. The UK and Canada underperform here. It also shows that as Poland becomes a richer nation, their relative contribution to collective defense just gets more worthy of notice. Still not sure how to fully absorb this graphic, but it is growing on me. This next graphic can be tricky. It is really two, combined. The two big circles are simply U.S. spending, and then non-U.S. NATO spending…then it is disaggregated. I have one nit to pick. Turkey is not a European nation. It has a little bit of European territory, but it is not an European nation. As such, they should not be included in the “NATO Europe & Canada” bubble…and TBQH, Canada should not be in there either. Of note: European NATO has both a larger population and GDP than the USA. Yeah…that aggregation bubble is trying too hard. Editorial Note: The Atlantic Council is using the correct spelling, “Turkey”, in the text, but is using the incorrect “Türkiye” in the graphic. There are no umlauts in English. Do better. Net one below. There is a similar problem the following graphic. It is too much cope, and trying too hard to make an anti-American point. The EU Institutions contributions should not even be factored in here. The EU is not interchangeable with European NATO, we might as well add the Organization of American States to the U.S. numbers. Disaggregate European NATO contributions to the EU effort and then add that into national totals, that’s fine…unless they are double counting here, which they might be. Net two below. If we want to discuss relative Ukraine contributions, this is a much better graphic. Italy and Spain…really? The UK gives less per person that the U.S.? Well, they are poorer on a per-capita GDP basis as the poorest U.S. state, so that may put them on par. Denmark deserves polite applause. If Germany did that…well… Anyway, we drifted a bit from the summit, but I think this will all be floating in the ether next month at Ankara. Let’s see what others are thinking. I was going to use the Council on Foreign Relations as my next check, but alas…there is 0.0 mentions of NATO on their main page. The Usual Suspects™ think America is neglecting NATO… So, instead, we’ll check back in with the highly civilized Atlantic Council’s article from Tuesday by Jason Davidson. It is the freshest of a series. Recent years have seen a whipsaw of NATO engagement with its neighbors to the south. After pressure from Italy and other allies on the Alliance’s southern flank, NATO agreed to the Southern Neighborhood Action Plan (SNAP) at the 2024 Washington summit. At the 2025 Hague summit, however, NATO adopted no significant new measures in this area. The upcoming Ankara summit is the perfect occasion for NATO to deepen engagement with its southern neighborhood in a more consistent way going forward. … The communiqué after NATO’s 2023 Vilnius summit defined its southern neighborhood as the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel region. The allies agreed on the neighborhood’s “security, demographic, economic, and political challenges” and that those challenges provided a fertile environment for terrorism and an opportunity for interference by strategic competitors (Russia and China) and resulted in human trafficking and irregular migration. A NATO expert group report on the southern neighborhood the following year concluded that “threats, challenges and opportunities in NATO’s southern neighborhoods matter to Allied security and to NATO partners.” Look no further than the Iran war this year to see a vivid illustration of the importance of the region to NATO allies’ security. In March, NATO-designated air defense systems intercepted several ballistic missiles in Turkish airspace that Turkish officials claimed originated in Iran. One of the missiles caused an explosion near Incirlik Air Base. The same month, drones from Lebanon—believed to have been launched by Hezbollah—attacked a British air base on the island of Cyprus. At first, I squinted a bit at this take, but then it hit me spot on—the Iran and Strait of Hormuz issue may well dominate the summit. …the Alliance should provide enhanced and integrated air-defense and counter-drone capabilities for allies on the southern flank. The previously discussed missile attacks on Turkey and the British base in Cyprus demonstrate the vulnerability of southern allies. The Alliance can use Operation Eastern Sentry, begun in response to Russian drone incursions along NATO’s eastern flank, as a model for how to bolster the deterrence and defense of vulnerable allies to drone and missile attacks. Moreover, as southern allies move toward meeting their commitment to spend 3.5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, they can devote some of those resources toward air-defense and counter-drone measures, which will also help them justify that increased spending to their publics. If, as it appears, the Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t going anywhere, the investment in air defense is a wise proposal. As we’ve discussed here the last few months, the primary thing accomplished by the U.S. and Israeli strikes this year is to buy the international community time. Political will can change quickly in the U.S., and there is a good chance that in five to ten years’ time, those in power in Washington DC will not have the desire, inclination, or even capability to buy the international community more time after Iran rebuilds its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The U.S. may not decide to “mow the lawn” again. Add to that the non-zero possibility that it might be engaged in a Great Pacific War with the People’s Republic of China…that would put European concerns on par with the priority given to the Burma Theater in WWII. The 2026 National Defense Strategy states “we will be clear with our European allies that their efforts and resources are best focused on Europe.” The document argues that given increasing US focus on the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, European allies can make the greatest difference for transatlantic security in Europe. There are reasons for optimism regarding the United States’ position on NATO’s engagement with its southern neighborhood, however. First, it would be fair to read the National Defense Strategy’s language as a reaction to European efforts to bolster security in the Indo-Pacific, which is a greater challenge for them geographically than engagement with the southern neighborhood. Second, the measures described above are relatively low-cost and mostly entail enhancements of activities NATO is already engaged in. Moreover, NATO’s efforts in the southern neighborhood could enhance allies’ security without taking away from European efforts to deter Russian aggression in the East. Solid analysis. That is enough for now. If you want more reading, especially on the view from Anatolia as the summit gets ready, I’d recommend giving this article by Ali Mammadov at the Modern War Institute a read. And if you’re looking for a nice giggle, give a read Deutsche Welle’s take on Turkey’s crack-down on Islamists and commies prior to the summit…and along the same vein, the socialist bedwetting over the same thing. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

The U.S. Army has committed $8.4 billion to expand production of its next-generation Precision Strike Missile, awarding Lockheed Martin one of the largest ground-launched missile contracts in years and locking in a manufacturing pipeline that runs through the end of fiscal year 2032. The modification, signed June 23, 2026, expands an existing contract with Lockheed […]View the full article

Poland has ordered nearly 46,000 of its domestically produced MSBS GROT assault rifles in the latest A3 configuration, signing a contract worth approximately $160 million with the state-owned manufacturer Fabryka Broni “Łucznik” Radom, with all deliveries scheduled for completion by the end of 2027. The contract, announced June 24, 2026, by Poland’s Armament Agency, the […]View the full article

A Ukrainian defense firm has developed a hand-launched reconnaissance drone capable of flying 150 km (93 miles) into enemy territory while resisting electronic jamming, with serial deliveries expected to begin this autumn, the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarny reported. The drone is called Sweetheart, and the company behind it is General Chereshnya, a Ukrainian developer whose […]View the full article

A Ukrainian air defense system built by the U.S. defense company Sierra Nevada Corporation was destroyed in Kharkiv region by a Russian first-person-view (FPV) drone operated by the “Sever” (North) assault grouping, marking what appears to be the first confirmed combat loss of the MAAWLR anti-drone missile launcher in the war. The MAAWLR, which stands […]View the full article

A Munich-based artificial intelligence startup called SE3 Labs stepped out of stealth mode on June 26, 2026, announcing that its spatial AI platform is already under contract with the German Bundeswehr and operational in military exercises across Europe, where the company says it has reduced the time between detecting a target and engaging it by […]View the full article

Two Norwegian companies have joined forces to put better magnetic technology into the hands of military boarding teams around the world, with Blumags and H. Henriksen AS announcing an exclusive supply agreement on June 23, 2026, that reshapes how corrosion-resistant tactical magnets reach the specialized operators who depend on them. Under the deal, Blumags becomes […]View the full article

Poland has signed a contract worth approximately $16 million to purchase American-made V-BAT vertical takeoff and landing drones for its Navy, with the deal set to be completed before the end of 2026, Defence24 reported. The agreement, confirmed by Poland’s Armament Agency, covers one full system set and several aerial platforms, making Poland one of […]View the full article

Ukraine has received a fresh batch of Canadian-built armored medical evacuation vehicles purchased through donations to the UNITED24 fundraising platform, with 13 INKAS Sentry AMEV units handed over to military medics operating on the front lines. The Sentry AMEV sits on a Ford F-550 Heavy Duty chassis and is built from the ground up for […]View the full article

The experimental aircraft that could change how every future military jet is built just cleared another milestone, after Aurora Flight Sciences announced that the triangular wings for its X-65 demonstrator have arrived at its Virginia integration facility and are now being mated to the fuselage, bringing the program a significant step closer to a first […]View the full article

Estonia took delivery of its first medium-range air defense missile system on June 22, 2026, when the Estonian Air Defence Wing received the IRIS-T SLM at Ämari Air Base, giving a NATO member that shares a 294-kilometer (183-mile) border with Russia the ability to engage aircraft, cruise missiles, and helicopters at ranges and altitudes that […]View the full article

Dutch soldiers are training with anti-drone tunnels, the netted covered routes first developed by Ukrainian forces to shield vehicles from kamikaze drone strikes, after the Netherlands became one of the first NATO armies to integrate Ukrainian battlefield lessons directly into its largest military exercise in twenty years, Eindhovens Dagblad reported from the field in northern […]View the full article

If I am ever invited into someone’s personal study, office, or library—especially someone who puts themselves forward as a national security type—one of the things I not-so-subtly look for is maps, charts, or better yet, a globe. Yes, I will judge you. It matters. I have seen exceptionally credentialed and powerful uniformed and civilian leadership here and in Europe have an almost comical ignorance of the world in which they hold access to levers of almost unimaginable power. From a complete disinterest bordering on criminal unawareness of the bottom topography of the Baltic and Taiwan Strait, to not knowing where the Cape of Good Hope is, or even what a Great Circle Route is. That kind of ignorance gets people killed. They got their positions of power and influence for a whole host of reasons, but an understanding of geography and the ability to read a map was probably not one of them. This all goes back to not just an incomplete education—but an incuriosity of the fundamentals that makes me question completely anything these individuals have to say on any subject outside of the Coke v. Pepsi rivalry. Our regulars are probably tired of seeing me write, “Let’s go to the chartroom…”. It is more than a tagline. I mean it. You have to ground everything you do relative to the stage on which it is being presented. In the national security arena for a global power—it is the planet. But what representation are you using? What projection of that three dimensional object is informing your decisions? If someone says, “When you look at a map of the world…”, more likely than not, what will pop into your mind will be what is at the top of the post, the Mercator Projection. That may be one of the contributing factors to inadequate strategic thinking in the modern age. Of course, any attempt to represent a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional format is going to create some problems. You need multiple perspectives, and often the one that best serves in helping you understand the challenge of the moment. As we continue to argue the point here, we don’t need a new force design, or national strategy, we need a national understanding. We need to understand the fact we are a maritime and aerospace power, and those are the two domains where the majority of fighting in any war against the People’s Republic of China is going to take place. It has a unique set of challenges that have nothing to do with politics, people, culture or anything from man; it has to do with the interface of land, water, time, and distance. As we learned and then forgot from WWII, any war in the far reaches of the Pacific requires range, scale, and the logistics system that appreciates both and can sustain the fight forward. Stop throwing spreadsheets and hundred-page think tank products at a leadership class that are more verbal and personable personality types than they are numbers and engineering thinkers. On top of that, they are busy. You need to catch their attention at the start and keep it long enough to give them the highlights of the Executive Summary. They like pictures…but you need the right pictures to make your point. I give you the Spilhaus Projection: In 1942 (Athelstan Frederick) Spilhaus tackled the problem of displaying the world's oceans in an unbroken view. He achieved this by carefully selecting antipodal points as the centers for two hemispheric projections.[12] However it wasn't until 1979 that he published maps using continental shorelines as "natural boundaries", including one that has become the typical example of Spilhaus's technique. It uses locations near Hankou in China and Córdoba in Argentina as poles with a cut joining them across the Bering Strait.[13] In 1991, Spilhaus published Atlas of the World illustrated with a large selection of maps having "geophysical boundaries", typically coastlines, in various orientations and for various purposes. He published several other papers and articles on the topic.[14] More recently, the Spilhaus Projection has been used to map multiple seafloor characteristics such as tectonic plate boundaries, hydrothermal vents, and drilling hole sites.[15] You can get a more full background here, but let’s discuss why this should be the map we should be pondering the most now. What are the top-5 even the novice should get? AUKUS is a must-succeed. Don’t balk. Don’t stutter. Don’t be difficult. Make it work. It reinforces our left flank. Australia and the Philippines are our shield and redoubt. Taiwan is the stopper that keeps the PRC relatively contained. If you lose that, Guam is your new front line. A strong Japan and South Korea must be made stronger and closer. They are our right flank. What does the PRC want? Once you accept that they want everything from the line drawn from Alaska to New Zealand to their coast under their uncontested control, but are more than happy to let us have everything on the other side, then you understand what they have been doing for decades in the small island nations in the Southwest Pacific. People grow up with maps that emphasize Europe and the North Atlantic. This projection breaks that mental fixation, putting Europe and the North Atlantic in a minor corner of the map, almost an afterthought that barely catches the eye. A slightly more recognizable version is below. Do you know that if you turn this into square tiles, they can all fit together in a repeating pattern? You can cover floors with it. It looks like this. When does the Secretary of War’s bathroom need to be retiled? h/t Simon KuenstenmacherLeave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

Ukraine is turning to the global labor market to fill its infantry ranks, with Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announcing, that the government will license private recruitment companies to sign up foreign nationals for the Ukrainian Defense Forces, paying those firms approximately $7,400 per recruit they bring in while offering the soldiers themselves monthly salaries of […]View the full article

Cheap, mass-produced Ukrainian long-range one-way attack drones are breaking through one of the most expensive air defense networks ever assembled, with a 20 to 30 percent penetration rate that is proving sufficient to systematically dismantle Russia’s oil refining industry and degrade its military logistics, a Ukrainian officer with direct command experience in the deep-strike drone […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has hired four civilian cargo ships capable of driving military vehicles directly onto beaches and island piers without fixed port infrastructure, chartering them for operations out of Naha, Japan, starting July 30, 2026, in a $37 million contract that tells a precise story about how seriously American military planners are taking the […]View the full article

The aircraft the U.S. Navy relies on to hunt submarines and track enemy ships across millions of square miles of open ocean is getting smarter, faster, and harder to evade, after Boeing received a $121 million contract to upgrade nine P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to the most advanced configuration yet fielded, with six of […]View the full article

The U.S. Army is getting more hypersonic missiles, after the Navy awarded Lockheed Martin Space an $83 million contract modification on June 22, 2026, to procure additional All-Up Rounds under the Conventional Prompt Strike program satisfying Army requirements, with nearly the entire contract value funded by Army missile procurement appropriations and work running through June […]View the full article

The U.S. Marines stationed on Okinawa, Japan, can now sink enemy warships from land and shoot down drones from the back of a truck, after the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment formally received both the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System and the Marine Air Defense Integrated System in June 2026, completing the weapons fielding that transforms […]View the full article

All six truck-mounted launchers belonging to the U.S. Army’s only THAAD battery in South Korea have returned to their home base in Seongju County, ending a three-month deployment to Osan Air Base that sparked months of speculation about whether Washington was stripping the Korean Peninsula of missile defenses to support its military campaign against Iran, […]View the full article

A Russian military-affiliated Telegram channel claims Ukraine used U.S.-supplied AGM-188 Rusty Dagger cruise missiles to strike the Sborka semiconductor plant in Voronezh, a claim that, if confirmed, would represent the first documented combat use of a weapon system the United States designed from scratch specifically to give Ukraine a mass-producible long-range strike capability at a […]View the full article

A simply outstanding summary of the state of play in the re-vitalization of—and in parts re-imagining of—defense production capabilities can be found in an article in the June 5, 2026 Investors Business Daily, above the fold on page 1, by Harrison Miller and Paolo Confino. The White House is seeking expanded manufacturing commitments from defense contractors, is pressing automakers to convert spare production capacity to defense, and is urging NATO partners to supplement weapons production. The Trump administration aims not simply to rebuild stockpiles depleted by the war against Iran. It wants to revamp large segments of the traditional military industrial complex. Unlike previous buildups, this won’t just be the usual players we see in the defense arena (RTX (RTX), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Boeing (BA) and General Dynamics (GD)). This expands the number of players we will use to expand our ability to project power. To meet the requirements of the war that more and more people are starting to appreciate, we can’t rely on the excellent few; we need mass. We have a need to scale. We need more, sooner, and are running out of time. We need more players with new ideas in the mix. …a raft of generally younger, innovative and efficient players — Palantir Technologies (PLTR), AeroVironment (AVAV), privately owned Anduril and others — are jockeying aggressively to seize opportunities. "The model of procurement is changing," said Dr. Jerry McGinn at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS. "They (the White House) are doing these big deals to buy a bunch of munitions. But it's really more about how they're buying future systems, and the planning for future systems is different." Here’s the driving factor. Since the hangover from the “peace dividend” era and the turn of the century, more and more people have been warning about the self-delusion our natsec nomenklatura. They were happy to build their reputation and their retirement fund with interesting concepts, well-edited reports, and careful alignment with domestic socio-political priorities, all the while finding reasons not to be concerned with our criminally shallow magazines. Perhaps they’ve finally found religion. The expenditures this spring against Iran are just a whisper of what will be required in any Great Pacific War against the People’s Republic of China (PRC). I have little patience with people—especially the retired senior GOFO and political appointees—who have retreated to the fainting couch about what was used this spring against Iran…something we have been planning for since I was in middle school. Bells were ringing about inadequate magazines after every OPLAN revision and related exercises in the mid-late 1990s. After Desert Fox. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Constantly discussed in COCOM planning cells. We knew this. We were warned. Fine. We’re here—so let’s do something about it. Without action, we risk early culmination in any conflict west of the International Date line against the PRC, or being forced to let it simply devolve into an exchange of low-tech/high death (for us) secondary weapons options…or what you see in Ukraine right now—a slow slog. Those in the last two decades who sold “72-hour Wars” and exquisite “war winning technology” as opposed to doing the hard work of sustaining a realistic warfighting capability bear this blame, but we cannot do anything about the past. What are we doing now? Something better than we’ve seen in years. The aggressive start to the U.S.-Israel war on Iran depleted U.S. missile stockpiles. In the first 39 days of the Iran war, the U.S. expended more than half its prewar inventory for four critical munitions: the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), SM-3, THAAD and Patriot, according to an April report from CSIS. Mark Cancian, retired Marine Corps colonel and senior advisor for the defense and security department at CSIS, says the usage rate for precision munitions has been “very high,” but the rate for other munitions is comparable to operations like Desert Storm and the Iraq invasion. “It’s a high rate of usage, but I wouldn’t say it’s unprecedented,” Cancian said. These “exquisite class” munitions — highly advanced, high-precision weapons — are also very expensive, often priced at more than $1 million per unit. Rebuilding these inventories could take one to four years, depending on the missile pipeline, according to CSIS. The center noted these missiles would be critical for any conflict in the Western Pacific or with China. This must be a bi-partisan effort. It must outlast the Trump administration. I know that is a position that is hard for some to run with in an election years, but this is more important than petty political posturing. “The industry’s greatest concern is ensuring there’s a long-term commitment from the DOD to use the expanded capacity,” Cancian said. Dr. McGinn, director of the Center for the Industrial Base at CSIS, said defense contractors have a “difficult history” planning production timelines, due to volatile demand from the DOD. “If you’re a government program manager managing the Patriot program or if you’re a contractor building those systems and your order book is 70 then it suddenly changes to 50, that’s a big deal,” he said. New Missiles And Munitions ProgramsWhile the military has a bad reputation for cost management, the current budget effort looks to shore up some of its most sophisticated weapons systems with cheaper substitutes that can be built more quickly. “There’s a whole variety of systems that are just coming online, coming out of what I call the developmental primordial soup,” Cancian said. He noted these systems have been in development for “many years.” But the Ukraine war accelerated those efforts. “So there’s a variety of (counter-unmanned aircraft system) technologies that are coming online,” he said. None of these systems are one-to-one replacements for exquisite systems. But they do offer reliable complements and alternatives, which can help stockpiles last longer, according to Cancian. Last year the Air Force launched the Family of Affordable Mass Munitions (FAMM) program, which plans to procure 28,000 low-cost munitions by 2031. These include variations for fighter jets, palletized launches via cargo aircraft, and long-range cruise missiles. Some recent additions to the U.S. missile arsenal, including a range of FAMM designs, cost as little as $250,000. The Air Force lists Anduril, CoAspire and Zone 5 as vendors on budget documents for the FAMM program. Other firms have revealed cheaper cruise missile models such as Lockheed’s CMMT cruise missile, a modified Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munition, and Leidos Holdings‘ (LDOS) Small Cruise Missile, according to reports. The U.S. has even taken to copying some of its scrappier adversaries, developing its own version of Iran’s notoriously cheap and effective Shahed drones for just $50,000 apiece. These Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drones are developed by privately owned SpektreWorks. Price ranges from $20,000 to $50,000. Scale. That is how we get scale. Without scale we will not be able to properly attack the PRC target set. It makes the operations in Iran look like what it is, a dress rehearsal. Wars are won with the application of mass, not by having the most exquisite wunderwaffe. In 2025, RTX, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin’s international sales grew faster than those to the U.S. government, according to company filings. RTX, the largest of the three, did $12.5 billion in 2025 sales to foreign governments, up 14% from the year before. Northrop Grumman’s overseas sales grew 20% to $5.99 billion, well ahead of the 3% increase for the overall company. At Lockheed Martin, international sales rose 15%, more than double its 6% overall revenue growth. Sales to foreign governments represent a comparatively small — but not insignificant — share of their total business. Lockheed Martin is the least reliant on the U.S. government, with 28% of its sales coming from foreign countries, compared with 14% for Northrop Grumman and RTX. NATO Arms Up; Will U.S. Defense Stocks Benefit?U.S. defense stocks are seeing added demand as European allies hike their defense spending. Nothing has driven high-dollar sales of U.S. weapons to Europe like Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and rising concerns that it won’t end there. Germany’s 2026 defense budget of $127 billion is more than double the roughly $62 billion it spent in 2021, according to data from NATO and the German government. In April, the French government proposed to add $39 billion to its defense budget through 2030. Britain is moving up plans to increase defense spending from 2.5% to 3% of GDP in five years. In April, RTX’s defense arm, Raytheon, agreed to two contracts with Ukraine and Netherlands for Patriot missiles, valued at $3.7 billion and $627 million, respectively. In March, Lockheed Martin signed a comprehensive agreement to provide the Czech Republic with F-35 fighter jets. Anything we can do to encourage the internationalization of the rebuilding of defense capacity should be roundly supported. Both we and the Europeans must fully understand that if a war erupts in the Pacific, all but a token American presence in European NATO will be available—and those will be second-tier forces. Everything will be heading to the Pacific. Europe will not be on its own, but they need to prepare to act as such. The House version of the Pentagon’s budget request now faces Senate scrutiny, which means political debate — especially in a midterm elections year. But despite the record-setting overall number, CSIS estimates the actual outlays — the amount that the Treasury actually pays out in a given year — will peak in fiscal 2028 at just under $1.3 trillion (in fiscal 2027 dollars). That could put outlays as a percentage of U.S. GDP at around 3.7% at the 2028 peak. That level is well below the Afghanistan War’s 4.7% ratio in 2010 and the Reagan-era peak of 6% in 1986. Defense outlay ratios were much higher during the Vietnam War and World War II. That helps explain how the current military budget could be a rare point of common ground in Congress, according to Gabelli Funds’ aerospace and defense analyst Tony Bancroft. “There’s always going to be (political) machinations and brinkmanship, but ultimately they’ll reach a deal,” he said. “Both sides recognize they want to get this done.” Investors and the contractors will almost certainly feel the same. “The primes are going to enter a major capex cycle if this bill passes,” Bancroft said. “The spending is real. It’s happening.” So, we wait—mostly—on the Senate. They have not even scheduled a floor vote yet. As a side note, the referenced article in IBD is a deep dive. I did not even cover the portion about the Golden Dome missile defense effort. Give it a read. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. 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From australian abc news service https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-22/australia-canada-sign-billion-dollar-over-horizon-radar-deal/106827724?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other