Pentagon · U.S. · Iran · Republicans · CBS News Technology
Missile crisis: The hard truths about America's military arsenal
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On the floor at Lockheed Martin's production facility in Camden, Arkansas, Tim Cahill, head of the company's missile division, showed "Sunday Morning" the latest model of the Patriot air defense missile, a state-of-the-art weapon designed to shoot down the deadliest of threats: an incoming ballistic missile.
Key facts
- While Denneny is working on contracts worth $400 million to make affordable missiles, Lockheed Martin signed a $59 billion contract to build high-performance Patriots
- Each of these "bullets" costs about $4 million, and Lockheed Martin is currently turning out 750 of them a year, not nearly enough to replenish the estimated 1,500 fired in the war against Iran
- Lockheed Martin intends to increase Patriot production from 750 a year to 2,000, by laying on more shifts and increasing automation on the assembly line
- Lockheed Martin depends on a vast supply chain, on the order of 500 to 1,000 suppliers, creating potential bottlenecks
Summary
"It's going to vaporize pretty much whatever it hits," Cahill said. Each of these "bullets" costs about $4 million, and Lockheed Martin is currently turning out 750 of them a year, not nearly enough to replenish the estimated 1,500 fired in the war against Iran. Mark Cancian, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has compiled estimates of the Patriot and six other critical weapons (including the Tomahawk; the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile, or THAAD; and the long-range Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM) used against Iran. "If they fire a ballistic missile, we have to use one of our high-end systems to defend," Cancian said.