The US Army has awarded Lockheed Martin a massive contract worth up to $58.6 billion to produce Patriot interceptor missiles. The Pentagon announced the deal on Wednesday as ongoing conflicts in Iran and Ukraine continue to drain American weapons stockpiles.
The United States has sent large amounts of munitions to its allies and used many more in its own operations, creating serious concerns about remaining inventories of key air-defence and precision-guided weapons.
This new award turns an earlier one-year contract of $4.7 billion into a seven-year agreement covering production from fiscal 2026 through 2032. Pentagon officials are pushing contractors to speed up output, and the Trump administration has steadily increased pressure on defence companies to focus on manufacturing rather than shareholder payouts. In January, President Trump signed an executive order targeting firms that underperform on government contracts while still handing out profits.
Industry leaders welcomed the multi-year plans but stressed that Congress must approve the necessary funding before companies can expand factories and buy more components. Exact delivery schedules for many of these deals remain under discussion.
A similar framework agreement was reached with RTX, the parent company of Raytheon, to raise Tomahawk cruise missile production from roughly 60 units a year to as many as 1,000 annually.
Lockheed Martin said the new funding will help it keep its promise to triple PAC-3 MSE production capacity by the end of 2030. The company also plans to increase jobs at its Camden, Arkansas plant by 50 percent, from about 1,200 to roughly 1,850 workers. Lockheed earlier announced it aims to reach 2,000 Patriot PAC-3 interceptors per year.
The defence contractor is investing between $8 billion and $9 billion through 2030 to modernise more than 20 US facilities, including new munitions centres in Alabama and Arkansas.
The PAC-3 MSE is a hit-to-kill interceptor designed for the Patriot air-defence system. It can stop ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft.
A recent estimate from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies warned that the US military currently holds fewer than 1,000 Patriot interceptors and fewer than 250 THAAD interceptors. Both systems have seen heavy use in the Middle East.
