Pentagon urges faster US weapons production amid stockpile concerns 

The Pentagon has called on the United States defence 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 on 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 the department’s efforts over the last week to significantly speed up the process, but insisted it was part of a broader modernisation 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.

“Years-long development cycles are not acceptable,” Feinberg wrote. “We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now.”

The memo comes as recent fighting with Iran used up more of the US military’s already diminished stockpiles of advanced missile interceptors. Experts say shortages in both offensive and defensive weapons could leave US forces less secure.

Shrunken inventories of Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors may force the US and its Middle Eastern allies to take greater risks to conserve those air defences, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. For example, it said, American forces may launch fewer missiles against incoming Iranian drones and missiles, raising the chance of one getting through.

US President Donald Trump has bristled over public reports of a munitions shortage. On Thursday, he again denied that the US faced any strategic disadvantage when it came to weapons stores after five months of war.

“The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. He added that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the US as needed” and that defence contractors are “building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history”.

On Saturday, Parnell affirmed that Feinberg’s memo seeking a rapid escalation of weapons production is “real,” adding that it “will inform the fiscal year 2028 budget submitted to Congress for funding, and it is entirely consistent with our ongoing push to rebuild the defense industrial base.”

A defence spending bill is currently stalled in the US Congress, with lawmakers fuming over Trump’s military action against Iran and resisting the White House request to substantially increase Pentagon spending to $1.5 trillion, up from about $900bn last year. Experts have warned that even with an influx of funding, it will likely take at least three years to restore Patriot and THAAD interceptors to pre-war levels.

The number of Patriot interceptors fell from 2,330 before the war to 1,030 when the April ceasefire took effect, CSIS estimated last month. Following recent fighting, the stockpile is now estimated to be between 759 and 827, a decrease of at least 65 percent since before the conflict began.

The number of THAAD interceptors fell from 452 before the war to between 232 and 262 at the start of the April ceasefire, CSIS said. The US was able to replenish some of the inventory to between 234 and 278 interceptors. But the stockpile is still at least 38 percent smaller than it was before the conflict.

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense penned a new deal with defence giants Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in an effort to ramp up production capacity for parts used in missile defence systems.

“We don’t have that many [interceptors] left, and there are no good substitutes,” retired US Marine Corps colonel Mark Cancian, one of the authors of the CSIS analysis, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. “If we run out of Patriots, then the missiles get through.”