Washington scurries to buy more missiles, reposition ships as foes gnaw new holes in its sprawling global order
(Originally published May 15 in “What in the World“) The U.S. is dispatching Naval forces to the Middle East to counter what Washington has said is a sudden increase in seizures of oil tankers by Iranian forces in the Gulf.
The U.S. National Security Council didn’t say what specific vessels would be sent to join the Fifth Fleet in U.S. Central Command, the military designation for U.S. military assets deployed to defend U.S. interests in the Middle East, Central Asia and Pakistan. But the move follows the Iran’s seizure May 3 of a Panama-flagged tanker traveling through the Strait of Hormuz. It will also correct a rare absence of a U.S. carrier group in the region that began in April when the USS George H.W. Bush carrier strike group left the Mediterranean for its home base of Norfolk, Virginia, after an unusually long, 230-day deployment.
The Bush’s departure left the region without a major U.S. Naval presence for the first time since December, 2021, and exposed what some analysts worry is becoming a worrisome blind spot in U.S. defenses as it devotes more attention to China and Russia—Iran.
Russian forces spent the weekend as they’ve spent so many recently: launching fresh artillery barrages against Ukraine in an attempt to snuff out the Big Spring Counteroffensive and deplete Ukraine’s air-defense ammunition.
As it works to reduce the munitions shortage plaguing the U.S. and its allies, the White House has approved the U.S. Army’s request to sign multi-year purchase deals for missiles.
The Biden Administration’s proposed, record $886.4 billion military budget for 2024 already includes multi-year purchase deals for the Navy and Air Force to buy missiles to point at China. Typically, multi-year deals have been reserved for things that require huge investments and years to produce, like aircraft and ships. But the war in Ukraine and rising tensions with China have exposed dangerous bottlenecks in U.S. munitions production. Arms manufacturers want longer-horizon deals to help justify the investment needed to expand production.
Last year’s record, $858 billion defense budget, therefore, gave the Pentagon permission to sign multi-year deals for missiles, but required that it seek Congressional approval for any deals over $500 million. The Pentagon can’t just send such requests Congress directly: they need to first be approved by the White House, specifically its Office of Management and Budget.
Once Congress approves the budget, the Army will be able to spend $1 billion for more than 5,000 of Lockheed Martin’s Gmlrs, or Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, missiles to fire from its Himars and Mlrs mobile rocket launchers, and $1.2 billion for more than 100 of Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles to fire from Raytheon’s Patriot anti-missile batteries. The Army’s missile purchases appear to be part of a $4.8 billion deal announced last month to buy Gmlrs from Lockheed Martin. As part of that deal, the company will boost its Gmlrs production to 14,000 a year, up from 6,000 currently.