Ukraine war a bonanza for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and more

Less than three full months into 2022, Lockheed Martin’s stock has surged by more than 25%, while the share prices of Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman have also risen by roughly 12%, 14%, and 16%, respectively.

War in Ukraine a Windfall for Weapons Industry

Military contractors “will benefit, and in the short term we could be talking about tens of billions of dollars, which is no small thing, even for these big companies,” said one analyst. Common Dreams KENNY STANCIL, March 15, 2022,

Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine is a bonanza for arms manufacturers, which are lined up to profit as the United States and its allies increase military spending in an effort to bolster Kyiv’s forces.

William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told The Hill on Tuesday that “there’s a lot of possibilities for ways that the contractors will benefit, and in the short term we could be talking about tens of billions of dollars, which is no small thing, even for these big companies.”

In the weeks since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade, lawmakers in the U.S. Congress approved a record-setting Pentagon budget, and their counterparts in several European countries also vowed to significantly boost military spending to counteract Moscow.

The $1.5 trillion government funding bill that U.S. President Joe Biden signed Friday greenlights an astronomical $782 billion in military spending—an increase of 6% over last year and nearly $30 billion above the White House’s initial request. The package also provides $6.5 billion in military aid to Eastern European nations, including $3.5 billion worth of additional weapons for Ukraine.

As The Hill reported, the extra support for Ukraine “comes on top of more than $1 billion the U.S. has already spent in the past year to arm Ukrainian soldiers with modern weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, and Raytheon’s anti-aircraft Stinger missiles.”

One arms industry lobbyist told the news outlet that an immediate effect of the U.S. ramping up weapons shipments to Ukraine is that “we’re going to have to backfill some of that ourselves, so that will force the Pentagon to buy more from some of the defense companies.”

As for longer-term implications, the lobbyist said that Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike expect to pass an even larger military budget next year, which “will pump more money into procurement and into [research and development].”

The U.S. is not the only country where military contractors are anticipating a bump in sales. Over the past few weeks, European countries including Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden have announced that they will boost military spending………….

“We are proud of the confidence the German Federal Ministry of Defense and Luftwaffe officials have shown in choosing the F-35,” Lockheed Martin said in a statement.

Even before the Kremlin attacked Ukraine last month, arms manufacturers could hardly contain their excitement over the prospect of war, which they explained would be good for their bottom lines.

AsThe Hill reported:…………………………………

The weapons industry lobbyist told the news outlet that higher military spending in Europe would be a boon for U.S.-based military contractors:…………..

One day after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Quincy Institute’s Hartung warned against letting corporations and their allies in government use the war in Ukraine as a pretext for showering the military-industrial complex with even more money.

A week later, he argued that such a move would be “counterproductive” and potentially detrimental to U.S. security, echoing calls from anti-war groups that have long pushed for reallocating a portion of the Pentagon’s bloated budget to meet pressing human needs…………………

Last year, researchers at Brown University’s Costs of War project estimated that as much as half of the $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon alone since its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan has gone to private military contractors.

Lindsay Koshgarian and her colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies’ National Priorities Project and Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute, meanwhile, have estimated that corporations gobbled up more than half. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/15/war-ukraine-windfall-weapons-industry