Memo to leading defense contractors: Members of Congress are fed up and backing President Donald Trump’s efforts to reorient the industry.
Trump roiled the defense world last week with an executive order, plans for which we scooped in mid-December, that would cap contractor executive pay while limiting dividends and stock buybacks. Trump said he is making the move to address “how slowly these Companies are delivering vital Equipment to our Military, and our Allies.”
Fired-up leading defense lawmakers made clear that the major so-called “defense prime” contractors shouldn’t look to Congress for help.
“I haven’t been happy with performance, especially some of the primes,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, told us. “And I think the president’s aware of the frustrations we have — with cost, production — and we got to get better performance out of these primes.”
House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) also expressed frustration with big weapons makers.
“We’re down to the six prime defense contractors now, and they seem more concerned about Wall Street and their quarterly reports than they are about our defense production,” Rogers said. “And we’ve given more money — we did them as a supplemental [funding package] for Ukraine — they did nothing. And we’re all exasperated with it right now.”
The order and a separate post from Trump going after RTX came as the president simultaneously proposed boosting military spending by 50% to $1.5 trillion. But Republicans said the cumulative set of announcements should amount to a clear wakeup call for the industry.
“The industry is getting a clear signal that there’s going to be a demand signal, but they’re not going to just automatically be awarded these contracts,” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said. “Don’t expect that things are going to come automatically.”
