Northrop Grumman Arms Corporation CEO Kathie Warden said in an interview with the Financial Times that American military-industrial complex companies had sent a request to Washington, Brussels and European countries about their plans to buy weapons to support Ukraine.
As Warden explained, now American gunsmiths have no understanding of how long and on what scale the West intends to supply Ukraine with weapons. Because of this, they cannot calculate a business plan: whether to build additional capacity or not.
"Now, the most important thing is to get clear signals about the level of demand, long-term obligations and how intensively the available reserves will be used", she explained, pointing out that the West has not created reserves to meet current demand, and if Washington, Brussels and Kiev need more, they should tell the gunsmiths about it.
"We are ready to invest in more production capacity, but everything necessary will be built only if we can guarantee the demand for additional products", Kathie Warden explained.
The gunsmiths rush politicians into making a decision, not least due to the disruption in supply chains: the US military-industrial complex is faced with a lack of a number of components (primarily microchips and other electronics) and a significant part of weapons have to be built two to three times longer than usual.
