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【Text/Observer.com Bobcat】

According to a report on the U.S. Defense News website on August 6 local time, Boeing announced on the same day that in order to increase the production of Patriot missiles in the United States this year, the company is expected to break the annual production record of Patriot missile guidance heads.

The Patriot PAC-3 series missiles are produced by Lockheed Martin, and the guidance head is supplied by Boeing. Boeing said in a statement that in the first half of this year, it has broken the three-month (quarter) and six-month (half-year) PAC-3 guidance head production records in a row, and is expected to exceed the annual production record by 20% before the end of the year.

At the end of June this year, the U.S. Army announced that it had reached another multi-year procurement contract with Lockheed Martin worth $4.5 billion, which included 870 Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles and other related hardware. At present, Lockheed Martin has "obtained full funding" and the annual production of missiles has reached 550 missiles to supplement the same type of ammunition provided to Ukraine. According to reports, in 2018, Lockheed Martin's annual production of Patriot PAC-3 was 350 missiles, and by 2022, before the full outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, it had increased to 500 missiles per year. In addition, Lockheed Martin is said to have made internal investments to expand production, and it is expected that production will increase to 650 missiles per year by 2027 to meet the needs of the U.S. Army to replenish its inventory. Lockheed Martin is also working to ensure external supply chains, such as the supply of solid rocket engines from Aerojet Rocktdyne.

Earlier this year, Jim Bryan, head of Boeing's integrated air and missile defense program, told Defense News that Boeing has also made internal investments to match Lockheed Martin's plan, including providing funds to expand the Huntsville, Alabama plant by 35,000 square feet to produce guidance heads, which is equivalent to a 30% increase in production capacity. Although Bryan also said that Boeing is fully capable of using existing facilities to produce enough guidance heads to meet Lockheed Martin's planned annual production of 650 missiles, the newly expanded facilities will also bring higher efficiency, such as automatic testing and welding robots and other systems, which can also meet the higher demand of more than 650 missiles.

Despite this, not long ago, the Patriot PAC-3 missile still encountered a shortage of guidance heads. On the 20th of last month, Reuters reported that because Boeing could not supply enough guidance heads, Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was unable to increase the production of Patriots as planned to support the United States. At the end of last year, after Japan revised the "Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment", it began to work hard to share production capacity as an ally to make up for the gaps caused by the United States' strong military assistance to Ukraine and Israel. The most important one was to sell back to the United States the "Patriot" series of air defense missiles produced by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

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