Jim Taiclet, the current CEO of Lockheed Martin, issued a cryptic warning while taking part in an interview this past Sunday that claimed that issues with the supply chain were hurting the ability of his company to increase the production rate of carious critical weapons that the U.S. has been shipping to Ukraine to aid in the war effort trying to throw back the Russian invasion forces that are currently polluting the country.
The comments seem to be on the subject of Javelins, which is a portable and long-range guided anti-tank missile launcher that has the power of being operated by a single soldier, and additionally, the comments come after the U.S. has reportedly already given a stockpile of over 7,000 of them to Ukrainian defense forces.
When questioned during an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS News about what his company was planning in order to “scale up production to get more to [Ukraine] and to backfill what the U.S. has given up,” Taiclet claimed that extreme efforts were already being carried out in order to deal with the issued but that it may take multiple years to complete recent order because of the current issue with the supply chain.
“We are therefore on our side, accelerating our investment in that factory and in our workforce there,” he stated. “So we’re already investing ahead of time to buy tooling, to expand the plant and also support our suppliers to get ready to ramp up production. So right now, our capacity is 2,100 Javelin missiles per year. We’re endeavoring to take that up to 4,000 per year, and that will take a number of months, maybe even a couple of years to get there because we have to get our supply chain to-to also crank up. As we do so, we think we can almost double the capacity in a reasonable amount of time.”
Taiclet has urged lawmakers to try and take action by investing more funds into infrastructure that is heavily needed to try and increase the domestic production and supply of semiconductors, which are a critical piece in the building of any kind of advanced weaponry.
“Well, we’re planning for the long run and not just in the Javelin, because this situation, the Ukraine conflict, has highlighted a couple of really important things for us,” he stated. “One is that we need to have superior systems in large enough numbers. So like Javelin, Stingers, advanced cruise missiles, equipment like that. So we know there’s going to be increased demand for those kinds of systems from the US and for our allies as well and beyond into Asia-Pacific, most likely too.”
WATCH:
Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet tells @margbrennan his company is trying to double the production of javelin missiles to help support Ukrainians in the war with Russia and backfill U.S. needs but it “will take a number of months maybe even a couple of years.” pic.twitter.com/4OkRdshfxG
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