The U.S. military is firing missiles and dropping bombs on Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria at a higher rate than it had planned to produce them, forcing commanders to reach into reserve weapon stocks to continue the fight, according to the Middle East Air Force chief.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has publicly expressed concern that stocks of precision weapons like the AGM-114 Hellfire Missiles made by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing’s [BA] GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), were running low without enough on order to cover the shortfall.
Lt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who heads the U.S. Air Force in Central Command, said Thursday that dwindling stocks of precision munitions in the Middle East and elsewhere is a concern.
“It’s still a concern,” Brown said during a teleconference from Southwest Asia with reporters. “We were drawn down in Afghanistan and across DoD, the weapons buy was probably not–been forecast for this particular operation.”
The Defense Department dramatically expanded its missile and bomb purchases in its fiscal year 2017 budget request. At least $1.9 billion has been set aside in the spending plan for 45,000 new precision weapons to include the Hellfire, JDAM and Raytheon’s [RTN] Small Diameter Bomb increment 2 (SDB II). Lockheed Martin also has increased production of the GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided bomb to keep up with demand.
Lockheed Martin has been reticent to discuss specifics of its existing production capacity for Hellfire and other munitions, citing operational security.
“HELLFIRE has been in active production since the early 1980s, and as with any program, production rates often fluctuate in response to the needs of the customer,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson told Defense Daily. “HELLFIRE’s ongoing mission success is evidence of its integral role in our customers’ missions. We continue to upgrade the HELLFIRE missile to meet evolving mission requirements.”
A spokesperson for Army Space and Missile Command confirmed that production of Hellfire missiles increased for quantities ordered in year over year from fiscal 2014 through fiscal 2015 to present. International demand for the weapon has increased as well, the spokesperson said.
“HELLFIRE missiles and production capacity is fully adequate to meet the need, prioritization of production and existing inventories being successfully managed for all users,” he said.
The Air Force has increased its weapons buy in response to operations in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, Brown said. Those weapons are years away from fielding while the need for ordnance is ongoing in the anti-ISIS fight for both the U.S. and other coalition partners that deploy U.S.-built bombs.
“I know the Air Force has taken some steps to increase in the next pop, to buy more weapons. And you do that — you know, those weapons are about two years or so away, if not more,” Brown said. ”Many of our partners or, whether it’s here for, in Iraq and Syria, or in Pakistan or in the Yemen operation. So there’s a lot of people employing ordnance right now, precision-guided munitions that weren’t forecast.”
Brown said that without a steady stream of new ordnance into CENTCOM, he has to pull from global stocks that are prepositioned and maintained at calculated levels in case of a contingency. Combatant commanders in all areas of responsibility must balance the need for emergency stockpiles with the demand for ordnance to drop in the current hot fight, he said.
“We have stocks around the world that support not only Central Command, but other combatant commands,” Brown said. “And we have to do some analysis of where we take risk. And what I mean by that is where do we pull some weapons from that we were saving for further contingencies? And do we use them now or do we save them for later?”