The U.S. has been firing a lot of Tomahawk missiles lately.
So many, in fact, that the Pentagon is now betting big on catching up. This week, RTX Corp. won a Navy deal worth $23 billion, running through 2032, to accelerate manufacturing of more than 7,000 Tomahawk missiles.
The Tomahawk is a cruise missile that flies low to the ground and can hit targets from ships or submarines. It has been a workhorse for the U.S. military for decades, and it is getting a serious workout right now.
Decades of service have made the Tomahawk a standard choice for U.S. strike missions, and the current campaign has consumed a large share of the stockpile. The new contract aims to ensure that the weapon remains available for the kind of sustained operations the military now expects.
The U.S. has not officially said how many Tomahawks have been fired toward Iran since the conflict began in late February.
In a statement, Pentagon undersecretary for acquisition Michael Duffey said, "The Department called upon industry to expand munitions production, and RTX has answered that call."
RTX says it will expand its own capacity and work with hundreds of American suppliers to get more missiles out the door quickly. The Navy described the $23 billion investment as enabling missile delivery at an unprecedented speed.
The deal is a clear signal that the Pentagon thinks the current pace of production is not enough. It is one thing to say weapons firms are producing at record levels, which President Donald Trump has done. It is another thing to back that up with a 23 billion dollar order.
The money does not stop with RTX. The contract flows to hundreds of suppliers across the country, from engines to guidance systems to the electronics that make a missile fly straight. That is a steady revenue stream for a lot of defense companies for the better part of a decade.
And the spending is not done. The Pentagon is seeking an additional $1.3 billion for Navy and Army Tomahawks in a pending $67 billion supplemental budget. Analysts say that could fund roughly 462 more land-attack missiles. That is on top of the 7,000 already on order.
For investors, the through-line is simple. The U.S. is buying weapons at a pace we have not seen in years, and the companies that make them are getting long-term contracts with real dollar figures attached. That kind of visibility is rare in most industries, but it is becoming a pattern in defense.
The bigger question may be how long the demand lasts. The conflict with Iran is the immediate driver, but the U.S. is also rebuilding stockpiles and preparing for a more uncertain world. The price of oil and the behavior of adversaries are the watch points, but the need to restock is not going away.
For anyone with money in defense stocks, the next few years just got a lot clearer. For everyone else, it is a reminder that the modern battlefield runs on a lot of very expensive, very precise hardware. And someone has to build it.