‘The Military-Industrial Complex Is Winning’: While Bombing Iran, Trump Tells Weapons Contractors to Boost Production

CAPITALISM, 9 Mar 2026

Jessica Corbett | Common Dreams – TRANSCEND Media Service

The president and Lockheed Martin said that the expansion began months ago, but his comments followed a White House meeting held amid a US-Israeli assault on Iran and mounting threats against Cuba.

6 Mar 2026 – After meeting with several chief executives at the White House on Friday—while also bombing Iran with Israel and threatening Cuba—US President Donald Trump said that top military contractors “have agreed to quadruple Production of the ‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry in that we want to reach, as rapidly as possible, the highest levels of quantity.”

Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he met with the CEOs of BAE Systems, Boeing, Honeywell Aerospace, L3Harris Missile Solutions, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX—formerly Raytheon.

“Expansion began three months prior to the meeting, and Plants and Production of many of these Weapons are already underway,” he wrote, adding that another meeting is scheduled in two months.

In the lead-up to Friday, Reuters noted that the meeting “underscores the urgency felt in Washington to shore up weapons stocks after the Iran operation ⁠drew heavily on munitions. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Israel began military operations in Gaza, the US has drawn down billions of dollars’ worth of weapons stockpiles, including artillery systems, ammunition, and anti-tank missiles. The conflict in Iran has consumed longer-range missiles than those furnished to Kyiv.”

The news agency also reported that “Deputy Defense ⁠Secretary Steve Feinberg has been leading Pentagon work in recent days on a supplemental budget request of around $50 billion” that “would pay for replacing the weapons used in recent conflicts,” including the assault on Iran that has involved “Tomahawk cruise missiles, F-35 stealth fighters, and low-cost one-way attack.”

Critics of Trump’s deadly foreign policy have argued that the estimated $1 billion-per-day cost of his war on Iran could provide food and healthcare assistance to tens of millions of Americans, and have urged voters to call their members of Congress and pressure them to reject any further funding for the US-Israeli attack.

As Breaking Defense highlighted Friday:

It was not immediately clear whether the meeting… resulted in any new agreements to boost production beyond those previously announced by the Pentagon since the beginning of the year.

Those agreements include a multiyear deal to triple PAC-3 production and quadruple THAAD interceptor production with Lockheed. It also included separate multiyear deals with RTX to boost production for the Tomahawk, AMRAAM air-to-air missile, Standard Missile-3 IIA and IB, and Standard Missile-6, with production for certain of those munitions set to double or quadruple, RTX said at the time.

Those deals, announced as “framework agreements,” have yet to translate into definitized contracts.

Some companies confirmed their participation in the Friday meeting but offered limited details beyond that.

Northrop Grumman said in a statement that “we support the president’s focus on speed and investment to deliver military capabilities. With our industry-leading levels of investment and decades of proven performance, we continue to grow production capacity and deliver mission-ready technologies for the nation’s warfighters.”

Using Trump’s preferred name for the Pentagon, an RTX spokesperson said the company “is proud to support the administration’s goals of defending the US and its allies at this critical moment and committed to accelerating the production of five key munitions in accordance with the historic frameworks reached with the War Department last month.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also joined the meeting, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. After Hegseth shared Trump’s Truth Social post on the platform X, Lockheed Martin replied, saying that it began working with the Pentagon chief and Feinberg “months ago,” and the company has “agreed to quadruple critical munitions production.”

The company’s post quickly drew criticism. Drop Site News’ Ryan Grim quipped: “Lockheed selflessly and patriotically agrees to quadruple its production. What would we do without our military-industrial complex?”

In comments about the meeting this week, Trump and Leavitt have insisted that the Unites States is already equipped with what it needs for “Operation Epic Fury” in Iran, which has already killed 1,332 people, including key political leaders, according to the Iranian government.

The president said in his Truth Social post that “we have a virtually unlimited supply of Medium and Upper Medium Grade Munitions, which we are using, as an example, in Iran, and recently used in Venezuela.”

Trump sent troops into Venezuela in early January to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who have pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in US court. The South American nation’s government is now led by Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, who has agreed to let the Trump administration control the country’s nationalized oil industry.

The White House has ramped up a decadeslong economic embargo against Cuba in recent months by cutting off its supply of Venezuelan oil. This week, while waging a war on Iran widely condemned as illegal and blatantly motivated by regime change, Trump has told multiple journalists that the island nation is also going to “fall.”

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Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams. Full Bio >

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