Lockheed Announces $420 Million Arkansas Expansion for Patriot and THAAD Interceptors as the Iran War Drains the Arsenal
The plant expansion would add 650 jobs over five years. The company did not say how many more missiles it will build or when. Interceptor stocks fell sharply during the war, and restoring them could take years.
Lockheed Martin is putting $420 million into its Arkansas missile plants as the Pentagon works to rebuild stocks of interceptors used in the Iran war, the Daily Caller reports.
The announcement. The Arkansas Economic Development Commission said Monday the expansion will raise production of Patriot PAC-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors and create 650 jobs over five years. Lockheed did not say how many more interceptors it will make each year or when the added capacity will be running. A company spokesperson said Lockheed is tripling PAC-3 and quadrupling THAAD output, backed by more than $8 billion through 2030 to expand munitions and modernize more than 20 US facilities, including Camden, Arkansas. The expansion includes a 50 percent increase in Camden jobs, the spokesperson said.
The company's numbers. Lockheed reported $1.8 billion in third-quarter net earnings, up 14 percent, on $20.7 billion in sales. Its backlog hit a record $292 billion, including $52.5 billion for PAC-3 production.
The shortfall. The Daily Caller cites the Center for Strategic and International Studies in reporting that the US began the war with about 2,330 Patriot and 360 THAAD interceptors and was below 1,000 Patriots and near 250 THAADs by late July. The Congressional Budget Office estimates replacing expended interceptors would cost about $13.1 billion, and that restoring some inventories could take at least five years even with more capacity. The war had cost about $47.1 billion by mid-October, including roughly $29 billion to replace weapons, per the Associated Press.
The critic. Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute said Patriot production runs about 650 a year, and that even if it reaches close to 2,000 a year by 2030 or 2032, "it's still going to take several years to replace these munitions."
What we could not check. The cost and inventory figures come from the sources the Daily Caller names, not our own review. The report's framing that the war "drained" the arsenal is its own.