By Lara Seligman, Marcus Weisgerber and Drew FitzGerald

President Trump has summoned senior Pentagon officials and the top defense contractors to the White House on Wednesday to discuss ramping up munitions production amid concerns about the supply of U.S. missiles, according to people with knowledge of the internal discussions.

Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg notified defense industry leaders earlier this month to prepare for the meeting, which is expected to be contentious, the people said. The event had been tentatively scheduled for June 11 or 12 but was postponed amid negotiations to end the war with Iran, they said.

Trump is expected to urge defense companies to do more to quickly replace America's missile arsenal, which has been depleted by the war with Iran, the people said. Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume bombing if a peace agreement collapses, but U.S. defense officials have expressed concern about the rate at which the military have burned through missiles and interceptors.

The Pentagon early this year struck handshake agreements with top weapons makers to drastically increase production of critical missiles such as Patriot interceptors and Tomahawk cruise missiles that officials considered lacking even before this year's war. But the companies have yet to receive full funding for the new deals, as lawmakers and the administration haggle over the defense spending bill.

"Meetings are great, but they're not contracts. To do contracts you have to have money and money requires appropriations," said Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project and a senior fellow with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Feinberg and several major munitions suppliers are expected to attend, including Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell Aerospace, the people said.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the Pentagon has "more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump's strategic goals and beyond." But she acknowledged that Trump "has urged our defense contractors to constantly produce more made-in-America weapons, which are the best in the world."

"America's military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President's choosing," said Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. "We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests."

Trump previously summoned defense CEOs to the White House in early March, less than a week into the Iran war. After the meeting, Trump said the companies had agreed to boost munitions production. Weapons makers, including Lockheed Martin, RTX and L3Harris Technologies, have pledged billions of dollars in investments as part of their effort to expand munitions production.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers have resisted Trump's calls to increase the Pentagon's budget to $1.5 trillion, which would be the largest in history. But without a military spending bill for the coming fiscal year, the Pentagon can't finalize the new munitions contracts.

"We have to go from kind of a term sheet...to something called undefinitized contract action with the government, which enables us to start actually spending money legally in a way that will be committed to by the government," Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said in a recent investor conference. "Appropriations are required to go through Congress to get the full contract."

The Pentagon in its fiscal 2027 budget request has asked Congress to approve $52.9 billion to increase production of 12 "critical munitions" -- including interceptors, such as Patriot, Standard Missile and Thaad.

Further complicating matters is that much of the funding needed to boost munitions production in the Pentagon's budget request is part of a $350 billion reconciliation package that is facing opposition on Capitol Hill.

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com, Marcus Weisgerber at marcus.weisgerber@wsj.com and Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 22, 2026 13:44 ET (17:44 GMT)

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