Lockheed Martin cannot give U.S. allies any certainty as to when they will receive critical missiles for Patriot air defense systems, despite plans to triple capacity, Vice President Brian Dunn warned, as reported by the Financial Times, according to UNN.
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Brian Dunn, Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for Missiles and Fire Control, stated that the world's largest weapons manufacturer by revenue is working hard to increase production of critical PAC-3 interceptor missiles amid a supply crisis exacerbated by the war with Iran.
But in his remarks to journalists at the ILA Berlin Air Show, he sent a troubling signal to U.S. allies, including Germany, Japan, Poland, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, which operate the Patriot air defense system.
While he said the additional capacity would "obviously allow the needs of many users to be met in a shorter timeframe," he added: "We don't control what the allocation of those missiles is going to be. We can't tell anyone where you're going to be on that [priority list]."
"Obviously, there's a lot of rhetoric coming out of the U.S. Department of War right now... about how they're going to reorder, reorganize who gets missiles first. We don't control any of that," he noted.
Lockheed Martin has agreed to expand production of PAC-3 missiles from the current 650 per year to 2,000 by 2033 under a $4.7 billion deal with the Pentagon reached earlier this year.