By Marcus Weisgerber and Drew FitzGerald
Pentagon officials are drawing up plans to replenish U.S. munitions expended fighting Iran over the past week, according to people familiar with the matter, a step in the Trump administration's efforts to sharply increase the number of missiles manufactured each year.
Lawmakers in Congress and defense industry officials are expecting a funding request from the Pentagon to pay for costs associated with the war. The new funding would support the purchase of Patriot, Tomahawk and Thaad missile systems, which have been in heavy use since the U.S. and Israel began their strikes, the people said.
Recent fighting in the Middle East has burned through stockpiles for some of those weapons. That has added a new challenge for the Department of Defense, which is wrestling with how to pay for a war with an indefinite end date. It also is facing an industrial base that was already stretched to meet current demand and potential threats from China.
President Trump has envisioned an even larger pot of money being available for munitions and Defense Department priorities. In January he pledged the next defense budget would reach $1.5 trillion, a roughly $500 billion increase from current levels.
"The U.S. military has more than enough munitions, ammo, and weapons stockpiles to achieve the goals of Operation Epic Fury laid out by President Trump -- and beyond," White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. She added that the president "will continue to call on defense contractors to more speedily build American-made weapons, which are the best in the world."
A Defense Department spokesman declined comment, and referred questions about a spending request to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Trump administration officials have spent months pressuring big defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and RTX to triple or quadruple their annual production of their most advanced missiles.
The Pentagon launched an effort last year to accelerate production of missiles and other equipment to boost thin domestic stockpiles. Officials in June summoned more than a dozen top weapons makers to urge them to invest early in production increases. Steve Feinberg, the deputy defense secretary, has held weekly calls with some company chief executives for several months to drive the point home.
Company executives have responded with new investments but warned that production isn't as simple as building more factories. The asked-for production boosts depend on smaller contractors deeper within the supply chain.
"We've been working this problem set on munitions supply long before this conflict," said Michael Duffey, the Pentagon's top official for procuring missiles and other weapons, in a House committee hearing Wednesday. "Knowledge of our supply wouldn't make me go faster. We're going as fast as we possibly can."
The White House summoned top defense-industry executives from companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and RTX to a meeting on Friday, said people familiar with the plans.
Feinberg hosted a call with company leaders in advance of Friday's White House meeting with Trump, some of the people said.
The first four days of strikes against Iran are estimated to have cost nearly $11 billion, according to an analysis by Elaine McCusker, a top Pentagon budget official under the first Trump administration. The estimate for Operation Epic Fury includes the cost to position more than a dozen ships and 100 aircraft in the Middle East from bases in the U.S. and Europe since late December.
The Pentagon has likely fired about $5.7 billion worth of interceptors to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles and drones and another $3.4 billion for bombs and other types of missiles, McCusker said. The cost estimate doesn't include pay, training or the use of national assets in the region.
Top government officials have acknowledged the strain the Iran conflict has put on critical resources, like interceptors used to shoot down missiles. In a social-media post Monday, President Trump called U.S. stockpiles of medium- and upper-medium-grade weaponry "virtually unlimited" but acknowledged the most expensive hardware is in high demand.
"At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be," Trump wrote in the post.
Late last year, Pentagon officials asked Congress for a $28 billion funding surge to pay for the future weapons contracts. Appropriators bristled at the last-minute request and provided only about $8 billion in supplemental funding, leaving a roughly $20 billion gap.
That poses a problem for defense contractors, some of which pledged to boost their missile output over the next seven years. But executives have said their agreements will need firm Pentagon contracts to sustain their planned investments.
A military spending surge would be critical to achieving the president's goals, including developing the Golden Dome effort and building a fleet of new warships. But the spending surge could face pushback from lawmakers, particularly if Democrats take the House in November.
The money also may not address other immediate challenges in rebuilding munitions supplies.
"As long as they continue to launch, we have to continue to intercept," Tom Karako, a missile expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of Iran. "We've got to finish this fight as quickly as possible."
Write to Marcus Weisgerber at marcus.weisgerber@wsj.com and Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 05, 2026 17:39 ET (22:39 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments