Now this is a surprise.
American arms manufacturers and defense contractors are thrilled with the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East.
And, why not?
They know they stand to make a killing (pun intended) selling all those weapons that will be needed by both sides in the Middle East.
Top executives from Lockheed Martin, Oshkosh, and Raytheon just love the idea of the imminent escalation of the US bombing campaign against ISIS, and their joy only increased when Russian forces got involved in the Syrian Civil War and Saudi Arabia started bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The Department of Defense was given $607 billion dollars by the GOP House, and Lockheed Martin already got a $279 million contract to finish their fourth Freedom-class littoral warship, the USS Cooperstown; $302 million for the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile program; a $940 million contract for maintaining Sikorsky helicopters; and another $49.1 million for “ship integration” of the Aegis missile defense system.
A secretly recorded speech at a Credit Suisse investor conference contained this bit of celebrating:
“Budget-wise, our programs are well supported. We think we did very well. It’s great to have that [budget] deal done, and to have greater certainty, that benefits ourselves.”
And they are thrilled that the Turkish Air Force’s decision to shoot down a Russian fighter plane,
“[The Russians] are bringing back into Syria surface-to-air missile capabilities, making Syria an incredibly dangerous place to fly. The US military is flying a lot of those missions in the region, and they don’t like having their pilots fly without being able to bring them home safe…there’s an intangible lift because of the dynamics of that environment and our products in theater that we hadn’t expected to see.”
The Military-Industrial Complex spent $95,276,039 lobbying politicians this year, and it’s paid off.
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“Our programs are well supported. We think we did fare very well,” Tanner concluded.
And since things will most likely escalate when the real fighting starts, they will just keep raking in the dough.
Adding all the scare talk back home and the encouragement to buy guns, these guys will be doing quite well in the coming years.
War is a very profitable business.
Lockheed Martin Executive Vice President Bruce Tanner praised the “indirect” benefits that defense contractors would see as a result of the war in Syria. He discussed the many recent troubles in the Middle East, with an escalation of conflict in Syria and Turkey, and how these conflicts would lead to increased sales for their company.
Wilson Jones, president of the defense manufacturer Oshkosh, said that “with the ISIS threat growing, there are more countries interested in buying Oshkosh-made M-ATV armored vehicles.”
Raytheon Chief Executive Tom Kennedy said that his company was seeing “a significant uptick for defense solutions across the board in multiple countries in the Middle East. It’s all the turmoil they have going on, whether the turmoil’s occurring in Yemen, whether it’s with the Houthis, whether it’s occurring in Syria or Iraq, with ISIS.”
Stock prices for weapons manufacturers sharply increased just after the terrorist attacks in Paris last month.
In 2014 the PACs of Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin, contributed 21% more to congressional candidates than in 2012, and contributed 2.1 times more money to members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee than to all other members of the House.
Twenty-nine members of Congress own stock in the three defense companies to the tune of between $870,719 and $2.5 million, with Representative Richard Hanna (R-NY) owning between $115,002 and $300,000 worth of stock in the three companies. That’s the highest average among all members of Congress.
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