US Politics
Pentagon approaches US automakers to help make weapons as wars deplete stocks, report claims
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The Trump administration is reportedly reaching out to U.S. automakers about using their factories to produce military gear, as the ongoing wars in Iran and Ukraine drain American defense supplies.
Defense officials have spoken with top executives at General Motors, Ford, GE Aerospace, and machinery maker Oshkosh about the effort, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Wisconsin-based Oshkosh told The WSJ it began speaking with Pentagon in November, prior to the Iran war, in response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s call to put U.S. military manufacturing on a “wartime footing.”
“We’ve been out looking at capabilities that we think fit their needs, just proactively,” Oshkosh chief growth officer Logan Jones told the outlet. “We’ve heard it loud and clear that this is important.”
The Independent has contacted General Motors, Ford, GE Aerospace, the White House and the Pentagon for comment.
Oshkosh and a GM subsidiary already build vehicles for the military, and in March of last year, GE Aerospace won a U.S. military contract valued at up to $5 billion for aircraft engines to be sold to allied nations.
A government-led effort to bolster defense manufacturing would expand on these existing ties, calling to mind how Detroit automakers were recruited to build military equipment during WWII.
The ongoing Iran conflict has rapidly depleted supplies of key U.S. weapons such as Tomahawk missiles.
The U.S. maintains somewhere between three and four thousand of the cruise missiles, and the military reportedly used more than 850 of the multimillion-dollar weapons as part of the Iran war, which began in late February.
The Trump administration is seeking to raise defense spending to $1.5 trillion as part of the 2027 budget, the largest military funding request in decades.
The Pentagon has pushed to beef up defense manufacturing, following months of worldwide operations by the Trump administration in Venezuela, the Caribbean and Yemen, as well as multiple years of U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion.
Outside experts have warned that the U.S. doesn’t have enough munitions at the present to sustain a high-intensity conflict with a Beijing, given the extensive manufacturing base in China.
The Iran war has also highlighted the increasing use of cheap, highly lethal unmanned drones in conflict, a tactic pioneered in the Ukraine war.