Navy Awards Raytheon $22.9 Billion Deal to Rebuild Tomahawk Stockpile After Iran War

The Navy announced Monday it awarded Raytheon, an RTX business, a $22.9 billion contract to ramp up Tomahawk missile production, according to the Department of War. The deal runs seven years and is meant to push annual output from about 60 missiles to more than 1,000, Raytheon said in a statement reported by Defense News, the Union Leader and the Jerusalem Post.

The timing isn't subtle. The U.S. has used up just under half its Tomahawk stockpile since February, according to Reuters. The Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. fired more than 1,000 Tomahawks between the start of the Iran war on February 28 and late April, with more than 850 of those launched in the first month alone.

RTX said it produced three times as many Tomahawks in the first half of 2026 as it did in the same period of 2025. That's real progress. But the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, estimated in late May that it will take roughly four years to backfill the arsenal to pre-war levels, according to Newsweek's reporting.

Trump says stockpiles are fine. His own officials are asking for billions to refill them.

President Trump told Fox News' Trey Yingst that concerns about weapons shortages are overblown. "What we've used is peanuts," Trump said. "We have a lot of mid-level weapons." He also said, according to CNN, that Biden "gave away" munitions in "numbers that nobody's ever seen before," blaming his predecessor for any gaps.

That's Trump's defense, and it deserves to be stated plainly. Presidents routinely downplay strain during active operations to avoid signaling weakness to advers