America’s weapons reserves are dwindling as overseas conflicts strain production lines, as well as strikes by defense workers for higher wages.
During a White House visit earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked President Trump to approve Tomahawk missile transfers for use against Russia. Trump declined, saying the EU should help fund them and calling his decision “beyond the money.”
“It’s beyond the money,” Trump said. “You know, we need Tomahawks, we need a lot of other weapons that we’re sending to Ukraine, and one of the reasons we want to get this war over is exactly that. It’s not easy for us to give; you’re talking about massive numbers of very powerful weapons.”
The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) says America’s ammo shortage stems from supplying multiple wars at once. A single Ukrainian artillery battery can fire more 155mm shells in a day than some U.S. units used in the entire Iraq War. Despite producing 40,000 shells a month, output still lags, and even the Army’s goal of 100,000 by summer 2026 could be used up by Ukraine in weeks. FPRI also noted that before Trump’s Middle East peace deal, Iran’s 12 days of strikes on Israel forced the U.S. to deplete up to 20% of its global stockpile of missile interceptors.
“I have an obligation also, though, to make sure that we’re completely stocked up as a country because you never know what’s going to happen in war and peace, right?” Trump told Zelenskyy and reporters, urging them to focus on concluding the war rather than extending U.S. weapons transfers.
Politico reports that the production bottleneck stems not only from foreign wars but also from a standoff between defense contractors and unions. Nearly 1,000 Lockheed Martin workers assembling missiles and surveillance systems went on strike in May after rejecting a 3–4% raise, demanding double-digit increases to keep up with inflation.
“We are taking the shareholders’ interest into account and all the things we talked about, which should help improve our margins,” Lockheed’s CEO said, according to Politico. “Even though it may result in some difficult discussions with some of the customer base.”
The unrest spread beyond Lockheed, with about 3,000 more defense workers joining the strike and 2,500 submarine builders nearly walking out before a last-minute deal. A separate seven-week strike by 33,000 defense workers last fall ended with a contract granting a 38% pay raise.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies warned in 2023 that if the Ukraine war continued into 2025 — as it has — rebuilding U.S. ammunition stockpiles to peacetime levels could take six years, not including time to prepare for another major conflict.
