Tag: defense contractors

Trump buys millions in Boeing bonds while awarding it contracts

Trump bought up to $6 million worth of corporate bonds in Boeing, even as the Defense Department has awarded the company multi-billion dollar contracts, new financial disclosures reveal.

According to the documents, Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of Boeing bonds on August 28. On September 19, he bought more Boeing bonds worth between $500,000 and $1 million. In total, Trump appears to have bought at least $185 million worth of corporate and municipal bonds since the start of his presidency.

Kedric Payne, Vice President of the Campaign Legal Center, told RS in a phone interview there is “absolutely” a conflict of interest in Trump’s purchase of Boeing, especially since it is “a government contractor that is connected to military actions that the president controls almost unilaterally.”

Trump also bought between $1 and $5 million worth of Intel bonds in August, a week after the Trump administration took a 10% stake in the company. “I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER,” Trump posted on Truth Social on August 25. Trump purchased Intel bonds on August 29.

The partial purchase of the chip manufacturer, done under the auspices of driving technology research vital to national security, drew praise from some advocates of corporate accountability, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Others raised concerns about how the U.S. government could maintain fairness. “Will the government favor firms in which it owns stakes over other competitors that might have better technology or processes?” asked Peter Harrell, a Non Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. Since the U.S. government’s partial ownership could give the Trump administration far more influence over the company, Trump’s personal investment in Intel could blur the lines between personal, corporate, and national interests. Intel has said the government’s partial ownership would be passive, with the government agreeing to “vote with the company’s Board of Directors on matters requiring shareholder approval, with limited exceptions.”

Upon entering office, Trump did not move his assets into a blind trust run by an independent trustee that could not be directed by the Trump family. Instead, he opted to hand over his business empire to his sons. The White House did, however, insist that the bond purchases were made by independent financial managers “using programs that replicate recognized indexes when making investments.”

Keep reading

Ukraine, US finalizing deal for 25 Patriot systems, Zelensky says

Ukraine and the U.S. are finalizing a deal for Kyiv to secure 25 Patriot air defense systems, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday, a push that would boost the Ukrainian military’s ability to defend against Russian aerial attacks. 

“The difficulty lies in the production queue — a line of countries that have signed relevant contracts. We will be receiving these 25 systems over the years, with different quantities each year,” Zelensky said during a meeting with reporters in Kyiv, according to multiple news outlets. 

The Patriot system, which includes launchers, missiles and radar, can cost around $1 billion, and is one of the rare weapons that can intercept Moscow’s ballistic missiles, a necessary component as Russia continues to hammer Ukraine with aerial attacks. 

Ukraine will not receive the systems all at once, as it will have to wait for other nations to get the defense system that is in high demand. 

Zelensky said on Monday that Ukraine is working with the U.S. to “ensure that Ukraine still can receive the necessary number of Patriot systems. This is not an easy task, but it is one of the security guarantees for Ukraine — and it will work in the long term.” 

The long-term arrangement comes days after Zelensky’s trip to Washington, where he met with President Trump. During their meeting, which was reportedly tense at times, the two leaders discussed ways to end the Russia-Ukraine war. While in the U.S., Zelensky met with top U.S. defense contractors, including Raytheon, which produces the Patriot systems. 

Keep reading

US Defense Contractors Raise Forecasts After Zelensky Meeting

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with several US defense contractors this week, including Raytheon, GE, and Lockheed Martin. A few days later, major defense companies raised their full-year profit estimates significantly.

Spokespeople say that tariffs have no impact on demand for the defense industry. Naturally, Ukraine is seeking duty-free defense imports on defense products paid for by other countries.

Lockheed raised its profit forecast from $22.15–$22.35 per share, up from $21.70–$22.00. The revenue forecast increased to $74.25–$74.75 billion from the previous range of $73.75–$74.75 billion. CEO Jim Taiclet noted there is “unprecedented demand” for Lockheed’s F-35 fighters, CH-53K helicopters, and of course, the highly desired patriot missiles.

“We are investing aggressively in both new digital technologies and physical production capacity needed to meet the top defense priorities of the United States and its allies — and we are doing so in partnership with a number of leading technology partners, large and small,” Taiclet said in a statement.

“In Washington, I spoke with defense companies that produce Patriots and other weapons we need. The willingness to work with Ukraine is fully sufficient — Ukraine is trusted,” Zelensky said on Monday. “It is important that there be enough support for this at the political level in Washington.”

General Electric Aerospace (GE) increased revenue guidance from “mid-teens” to “high teens” in terms of percentage growth. Free cash flow is predicted to be $7.1 billion to $7.3 billion, which is around $1 billion higher than before the meeting with Zelensky. GE stock is already up over 80% YoY, with an 83% increase in deliveries of defense equipment.

Raytheon did not publicly comment on its specific EPS ranges but had a strong Q3. RTX adjusted its full-year earnings to $6.10 to $6.20 from $5.80 to $5.95 and also tacked on an additional ~$1 billion for its sales forecast.

Keep reading

Boeing given $2.7 billion in contracts for Patriot missile seekers 

Defense behemoth Boeing announced on Tuesday that it had been given about $2.7 billion in multiyear contracts to produce more than 3,000 Patriot Advanced Capability‑3 (PAC‑3) seekers through 2030. 

Boeing said the demand for PAC‑3 interceptors has spiked in light of the conflicts and tensions in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. 

Boeing is set to deliver over 3,000 seekers, a key component for the Patriot interceptor missiles, at a rate of up to 750 units a year, according to the agreements. 

The Patriot systems have been among the key tools in Ukraine’s efforts to defend against Russia’s missile and drone attacks over the past three years, and are also a key part of Taiwan’s preparations for a potential Chinese attack.

That demand has ramped up pressure on U.S. manufacturers to ensure that U.S. stockpiles aren’t depleted.

Boeing said it would work “closely” with the U.S. Army and Lockheed Martin to boost production and hit the new target for the interceptor. 

“Our team has never been better positioned to answer the nation’s call for greater air and missile defense,” Jim Bryan, the executive director of Boeing Integrated Air & Missile Defense, said in a statement. 

“These multiyear awards recognize the progress we’ve made and will allow us to meet growing global demand for the PAC‑3 seeker,” Bryan added. 

In early September, the Army awarded Lockheed Martin a $9.8 billion contract to produce PAC-3 MSE interceptors and associated hardware. 

Keep reading

Anduril Founder Urges Rapid Reindustrialization As U.S. Defense Supply Chain Remains Alarmingly Reliant On China

China’s latest decision to expand rare earth export controls, adding holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium to the restricted list just days ago, serves as yet another wake-up call for the Trump administration and Washignton as a whole. The U.S. remains dangerously dependent on China, the world’s largest producer of rare earths, for these critical minerals that are essential inputs into the manufacturing of drones, humanoid robots, EVs, and advanced weaponry. 

Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey sat down with Bloomberg on Friday to discuss how America’s defense supply chains are dangerously reliant on China. He said the U.S. must urgently “reindustrialize” and rebuild its capacity to produce rare earths, semiconductors, and advanced computing hardware domestically if it wants to survive the 2030s. 

“I mean, the reality is that our interests are relatively divergent at this point,” Luckey said, referencing President Trump’s late tariff threats (read here) against Being. “We need to make our own chips, our own computers, our own products downstream. China has a lot of leverage right now, and that makes it very hard to negotiate. They do have a lot of leverage right now, and so it’s very hard to make deals with them. I think it’s actually healthy for the US-China relationship for it not to be so dependent on China right now.”

Luckey noted that Anduril, one of the fastest-growing defense technology startups in the U.S, has been heavily sanctioned by China, forcing it to eliminate all supply chain exposure in China. 

Keep reading

China’s Grip On Critical Minerals Disrupts U.S. Defense Supply Chain

In 2023, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes warned that Beijing effectively has the US military’s supply chain by the balls, thanks to America’s reliance on rare earths and other materials which either come from, or are processed in, China. 

According to Hayes, Raytheon has “several thousand suppliers in China,” because of which “decoupling … is impossible.“

“We can de-risk but not decouple,” he told the Financial Times, adding that he thinks this is the case “for everybody.”

“Think about the $500bn of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95 per cent of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China. There is no alternative,” he said. 

Fast forward two years later – and China’s recent curbs on the export of critical minerals are rippling through the U.S. defense supply chain, slowing production schedules and sending manufacturers on a global search for scarce materials needed in everything from munitions to fighter jets.

In short, amid a surge in U.S.-China trade tensions earlier this year, Beijing tightened its control over rare earth exports. Those shipments resumed after the Trump administration reached a set of trade concessions in June, however China has kept a firm hold on materials destined for defense use. Accounting for roughly 90 percent of the world’s rare earth output – and dominating the supply of other strategic minerals – China has also barred the sale of germanium, gallium and antimony to the United States since December. The three metals are essential for bullet hardening, night-vision optics and other military applications, the WSJ reports.

Keep reading

Lockheed Martin Ready to Ship Typhon Missiles to Germany To Strike Moscow

The American defense contractor Lockheed Martin has pledged to accelerate the production of Typhon strike complexes for Germany if the United States and Germany sign a relevant agreement. The report was published by Defense News.
According to Edward Dobek, program director for launch systems at Lockheed Martin, the company’s facility in Moorestown, New Jersey is capable of delivering Typhon launchers to Germany within a year. He added that the faster delivery would depend on the governments of both countries reaching a timely agreement.
Earlier, the American magazine Military Watch Magazine reported that Germany is seeking to acquire Tomahawk cruise missiles and Typhon missile launchers from the United States, with the goal of gaining long-range strike capabilities potentially reaching as far as Moscow.

German Defense Ministry Confirms Interest in Typhon Systems

In July, following talks with his American counterpart Pete Hegseth, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated that Berlin is considering the purchase of Typhon missile complexes from the United States.

Keep reading

Entering a Golden Age for War Profiteers

When, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence wielded by a partnership between the military and a growing cohort of U.S. weapons contractors and came up with the ominous term “military-industrial complex,” he could never have imagined quite how large and powerful that complex would become.  In fact, in recent years, one firm — Lockheed Martin — has normally gotten more Pentagon funding than the entire U.S. State Department. And mind you, that was before the Trump administration moved to sharply slash spending on diplomacy and jack up the Pentagon budget to an astonishing $1 trillion per year.

In a new study issued by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the Costs of War Project at Brown University, Stephen Semler and I lay out just how powerful those arms makers and their allies have become, as Pentagon budgets simply never stop rising. And consider this: in the five years from 2020 to 2024, 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending went to private firms and $791 billion went to just five companies: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). And mind you, that was before Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget bill landed on planet Earth, drastically slashing spending on diplomacy and domestic programs to make room for major tax cuts and near-record Pentagon outlays.

In short, the “garrison state” Eisenhower warned of has arrived, with negative consequences for nearly everyone but the executives and shareholders of those giant weapons conglomerates and their competitors in the emerging military tech sector who are now hot on their trail. High-tech militarists like Peter Thiel of Palantir, Elon Musk of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey of Anduril have promised a new, more affordable, more nimble, and supposedly more effective version of the military-industrial complex, as set out in Anduril’s “Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy,” an ode to the supposed value of those emerging tech firms.

Curiously enough, that Anduril essay is actually a remarkably apt critique of the Big Five contractors and their allies in Congress and the Pentagon, pointing out their unswerving penchant for cost overruns, delays in scheduling, and pork-barrel politics to preserve weapons systems that all too often no longer serve any useful military purpose. That document goes on to say that, while the Lockheed Martins of the world served a useful function in the ancient days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, today they are incapable of building the next-generation of weaponry.  The reason: their archaic business model and their inability to master the software at the heart of a coming new generation of semi-autonomous, pilotless weapons driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing.  For their part, the new titans of tech boldly claim that they can provide exactly such a futuristic generation of weaponry far more effectively and at far less cost, and that their weapons systems will preserve or even extend American global military dominance into the distant future by outpacing China in the development of next generation technologies.

Keep reading

Lockheed Has Something ‘Magical,’ Costly as Hell, and Totally Secret Up its Sleeve

Defense giant Lockheed Martin just reported a rare — and yuge — quarterly loss of $1.6 billion, but CEO James D. Taiclet sounded unfazed, thanks to a “magical” classified aeronautics program he claims will create a “game-changing capability for our joint U.S. and international customers.”

Is it a bird? A plane? Superman?

Before we get to the speculation — and there is some juicy stuff — a quick look at how the company lost so much money on something that Taiclet said Lockheed “probably won’t be able to talk about what that is for many years to come.”

Lockheed launched Program X with the Pentagon in 2018 during the Trump 45 administration on a fixed-price basis. That strikes me as a bit odd (albeit awesome for taxpayers) because exotic weapons systems that require developing bleeding-edge technologies are usually done on a cost-plus basis. That’s just because you can’t price something when half the parts haven’t even been invented yet.

So Lockheed signed on to a fixed-price contract just a couple of years before Bidenflation knocked 25% off the value of the dollar. “But I can assure you,” Taiclet said of Project X, “that it’s going to be in high demand for a very long time, well beyond the fixed price commitments.”

What might generate so much revenue, not just from the Pentagon, but from our allies around the world? I did a little poking around on Reddit and other forums where nerds like to geek out and found some fascinating possibilities.

Lockheed lost the contest to produce the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) stealth fighter — now known as the F-47 — to rival Boeing. So there’s been some speculation that Project X is a carrier-based version of Lockheed’s NGAD for the Navy. But Lockheed denies this.

There’s also the long-rumored Hypersonic Reconnaissance Aircraft to replace the long-retired SR-71 spy plane. But those are top-secret, highly specialized aircraft that would be unlikely to generate foreign sales, even if Congress decided to allow it. (Congress refused permission to sell the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter overseas to help keep its secrets.) I seriously doubt Project X is an SR-72.

Here’s where the possibilities get weirder — or should I say, “magical?”

Keep reading

HYPOCRISY ON STEROIDS, about the Gaza genocide

The U.S. supplies 69% of the weapons, Germany supplies 30%, for Israel’s extermination of the Gazans, but on July 21st, America’s AP headlined “UK, Canada and 26 other countries say the war in Gaza ‘must end now’”, and reported that, “Twenty-eight countries including Britain, Japan and a host of European nations issued a joint statement Monday saying the war in Gaza ‘must end now’ — the latest sign of allies’ sharpening language as Israel’s isolation deepens.” America’s AP did not headline “Israel-allied countries support but also condemn the genocide against Gazans” — which would have been the full basic truth — they instead reported only that these countries (which the AP didn’t even completely list) were, in this “joint statement” (to which the AP provided no link, so that the actual document — which they were allegedly reporting about, was instead being actually hidden by the AP — censored-out by them) was “saying the war in Gaza ‘must end now’” INSTEAD OF that Israel and America and Germany must cease their perpetrating this genocide. The AP was saying that “the war in Gaza ‘must end now’” — as-if this ‘war’ ISN’T instead an extermination of Gazans, but just a war between Gazans and Israel, which latter Government is actually leading this Israel-U.S.-German-perpetrated genocide to get rid of Gazans. Israel is leading this extermination-campaign, just as Germany had led the one against Jews; and, just as Germany’s Government had participating foreign Governments helping them, so too does Israel’s.

Keep reading