Up & Up ...

There's money to be made, this time its Ukraine for 3 billion & counting. Who knows, it might be more, much much more if WWIII doesn't intervene.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bill, could you talk about the relative size we’re talking about here — this is now about more than $3 billion from the Biden administration to Ukraine — in terms of the context of what this means to these companies, this increased amount of money not only now, but, clearly, there will be security needs for years, and maybe decades, into the future?

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, this is a bonanza for the companies. You know, they’re going to profit from this in so many ways, it makes my head spin. But you’ve got the $3 billion in direct arms, which is a substantial amount for these companies. Then you’ve got countries like Germany increasing their Pentagon — military budgets to buy things like Lockheed Martin F-35s for billions of dollars, or Poland buying General Dynamics tanks. And then you’ve got several flows of money. There’s a Pentagon program to arm Ukraine. There’s a State Department aid program to help arm Ukraine. And then, of course, there’s the Pentagon budget. And these companies and the Pentagon are arguing that Ukraine is a reason to push it to record levels: over $800 billion in the Biden proposal, which is $100 billion more than at the peak of the Cold War.

So, between the arms to Ukraine, arming the European buildup, the Pentagon being jacked up far beyond what is needed even to address the Ukraine crisis, these companies, which already get — you know, the top five get $150 billion a year from the Pentagon. That’s just going to go up and up. So this is kind of unfortunate for the world, but it’s good financial news for these companies.

War is a racket - Smedley Butler

 

1935 cover from the first printing

Addendum ... 

Even before hostilities broke out, the CEOs of major weapons firms were talking about how tensions in Europe could pad their profits. In a January 2022 call with his company’s investors, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes typically bragged that the prospect of conflict in Eastern Europe and other global hot spots would be good for business, adding that “we are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales… [T]he tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”

In late March, in an interview with the Harvard Business Review after the war in Ukraine had begun, Hayes defended the way his company would profit from that conflict:

“So I make no apology for that. I think again recognizing we are there to defend democracy and the fact is eventually we will see some benefit in the business over time. Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD [the Department of Defense] or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business over the next coming years.”

Agan .... it's all about the money.

Javelin missile. Photo: US Army/Markus Rauchenberger.