Ukraine Conflict, Fears Over Alleged Russian Threat Boost 'US Capacity to Produce Weapons': Report

The US Senate passed a National Defense Authorization Act bill on Thursday authorizing a record $858 billion in the country’s military spending next year, a document that will now go to President Joe Biden to be inked.

Washington’s growing military spending is expected to create a new boom for US arms makers, a US newspaper has reported.

The media outlet argued that the combination of the conflict in Ukraine "and concern about longer-term threats [allegedly emanating] from Russia and China are driving a bipartisan push to increase US capacity to produce weapons.”

The outlet recalled that earlier this week, the US Senate gave a nod to a national military budget for the current fiscal year, which stands at about $858 billion, $45 billion above the sum that President Joe Biden had requested.

The newspaper cited an analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank as noting that “at this level, the Pentagon budget will have grown at 4.3% per year over the last two years — even after inflation — compared with an average of less than 1% a year in real dollars between 2015 and 2021."

The outlet also cited US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan as saying that the Ukraine conflict had exposed shortfalls in the nation’s military-industrial complex that should be tackled to ensure the US is “able to support Ukraine and to be able to deal with contingencies elsewhere in the world.”

The US’ largest military contractor Lockheed Martin, who has booked more than $950 million worth of its own missile military orders from the Pentagon, is already capitalizing on this move. Another US defense contractor, Raytheon Technologies Corporation, was awarded with more than $2 billion in contracts “to deliver missile systems to expand or replenish weapons used to help Ukraine,” according to the outlet.

But this is only the beginning, the newspaper argued. US military spending next year “is on track to reach its highest level in inflation-adjusted terms since the peaks in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between 2008 and 2011, and the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II — a level that is more than the budgets for the next 10 largest cabinet agencies combined."

The outlet’s report comes after senior Republicans overseeing foreign affairs demanded detailed information from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week on Washington’s military assistance to Kiev.

In a letter to the GAO, House Foreign Affairs Committee lead Republican Michael McCaul and Senator Jim Risch, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations panel, wrote that they want information on how the US administration is monitoring almost $14.9 billion in funds that were allocated for Ukraine and disbursed through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US State Department.

Since the beginning of the year, the US and its allies have delivered more than $40 billion in military assistance to Kiev. Moscow has repeatedly warned against providing Kiev with arms, something that the Kremlin says contributes to further escalating the Ukraine conflict.