Pentagon courts GM, Ford, and others to boost weapons production

The Pentagon’s outreach to General Motors, Ford, GE Aerospace and Oshkosh is a sign that Washington is looking beyond the traditional defense contractor network to rebuild weapons output faster. Senior U.S. defense officials held talks with the companies about producing weapons and other military supplies, a push that began before the Iran war but intensified as U.S. leaders confronted the strain of supporting Ukraine, operations in Gaza and strikes tied to Iran.

The timing matters. The United States has drawn down billions of dollars in weapons inventories, including artillery, ammunition and anti-tank missiles, and the military is now trying to replenish those stocks while keeping enough capacity for any new crisis. A Pentagon effort already on the books, the Office of Industrial Base Growth, is meant to expand and strengthen the defense industrial base by increasing competition, building capacity and creating clearer pathways for new businesses, including small firms, to enter the defense market. That is an institutional admission that the current supplier base may not be enough if demand remains elevated.

The pressure is visible in Congress as well. House Armed Services Republicans say the Army’s Organic Industrial Base includes 23 arsenals, depots and ammunition plants, and Rep. Rob Wittman has said many of those facilities still rely on World War II-era technology and have limited surge capacity. A House Armed Services Committee Military Readiness hearing on April 15 underscored how closely readiness, maintenance and production capacity are now linked. The issue is no longer just buying more weapons; it is whether the industrial machinery behind them can be modernized quickly enough to matter in a prolonged conflict.

Budget plans suggest the answer will require far more money and far more federal intervention. InsideDefense reported that the Pentagon is requesting roughly $30 billion for Defense Production Act purchases in fiscal year 2027, a figure it described as nearly a 100-fold jump over recent levels. That would mark a much more direct use of government spending to expand production and push civilian industry toward military needs.

The broader economic backdrop is equally stark. A White House economic report released in April 2026 said manufacturing made up 10 percent of U.S. GDP in 2024, down from 16 percent in 1997, and said defense-related employment fell by 2.1 million between 1985 and 2021. In that context, the talks with GM, Ford and other industrial firms look less like a one-off outreach and more like a test of whether the United States can convert commercial manufacturing strength into sustained wartime output before the bottlenecks in its defense base become a strategic liability.