Al Root and George Glover
The Iran War is in Day Six with Iranian forces launching attacks on Israeli and Saudi Arabian targets, while the U.S. promises to ramp up the pace of its bombardments.
The U.S. has essentially established air and sea dominance, but the longer Iranian resistance holds up, the harder it will be for Ukraine to maintain its inventory of interceptors that shoot down Russian missiles.
Ukraine can hope for a quick end to hostilities in the Middle East and higher missile production in the U.S.
"Russia's ability to exploit a gap in Patriot interceptor availability may be limited in 2026 if the Middle East War ends and/or as Iranian missile inventories dry up," wrote Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callan on Thursday. He believes Russia can make about 60 Iskander-M ballistic missiles per month. "As Iranian ballistic missile strikes slacken or even end, that may free up non-U. S. Patriot inventories."
A slackening would be good news. The U.S. is already boosting production of interceptor missiles made by the likes of Lockheed Martin, and RTX.
"The MBDA Aster interceptors for SAMP/T air defense systems are also planned to expand to 300 annually by 2028," added Callan. "But we suppose that goal could be increased too." MBDA Systems is a European missile maker owned in part by Airbus, BAE Systems, and Leonardo.
Missile production will likely be a topic for President Donald Trump on Friday. He is reportedly set to meet with defense executives on Friday, according to The Wall Street Journal , which cited a White House official.
It isn't clear which defense contractors have been invited to the meeting. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Barron's.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social this week that the U.S. had "a virtually unlimited supply" of weapons to carry on fighting the war in Iran.
But there are concerns that the country could run out of certain critical missile technologies due to choked supply chains for key components. Restocking the arsenal would be a boon for publicly-listed defense contractors.
Coming into Friday trading, the iShares Aerospace & Defense ETF was down about 1.5% for the week. It was down 0.8% in early trading Friday. Investors tend to bid up defense stocks in anticipation of conflict and sell them after fighting begins. Still, trends for higher military spending around the globe remain in place. The ETF remains up about 61% over the past 12 months.
Write to Allen Root at allen.root@barrons.com
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March 06, 2026 09:55 ET (14:55 GMT)
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