The Profiteer State: How Contractors Are Killing American Defense

On July 28, 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sat across from President Donald Trump in the White House and made a request that should have been routine for any ally fighting for its survival: a license to produce Patriot interceptor missiles on Ukrainian soil. Ukraine was asking for the simple right to build its own defenses; to produce the weapons it needed to stop Russian missiles from killing its people.

Trump denied the request. But why?

Competition. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, the manufacturers of the Patriot system, are notoriously afraid that if Ukraine is granted a production license, it could improve Patriot air defense missiles and manufacture them faster and at a significantly lower cost than the United States. One Republican official told The Atlantic that the real driver behind the hold-up is fear of competition, specifically that "the Ukrainians will find a way to improve the Patriot and then produce them at scale faster and for much less money than what the existing production lines in the U.S. could do." Publicly, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have blamed their hesitation on the risks associated with tech transfers, but privately, they are afraid, afraid that Ukrainian efficiency could expose the grotesque inefficiency of the American defense industry.

This is the behavior of an unaccountable cartel.

The contrast between the cultures of American and Ukrainian defense production could not be starker. Ukraine now manufactures roughly 10 million drones annually, a figure President Zelenskyy has announced will double to 20 million with continued foreign support. The United States, by comparison, produces just 100,000 units annually. We are lagging significantly behind Ukrainian production, still stuck in the earliest phases of building our own domestic drone industry.

This should be a national embarrassment. A nation that has been fighting for its existence against a nuclear-armed invader for over four years, now produces one hundred times more drones annually than the United States of America, the world's largest economy. Beyond drones, Ukraine's surging defense sector has made the country far less reliant on direct foreign aid. The nation has developed a low-cost alternative to Patriot missiles, with one interceptor costing approximately $700,000 compared to $3.8 million for a Patriot PAC-3 missile. Ukraine has also successfully tested a domestically developed ballistic missile with a 30% cost reduction. Ukraine is producing large volumes of dramatically cheaper yet equally or more effective missiles and drones compared with those made by Western allies, because Ukraine is doing what American defense contractors refuse to do: building better weapons cheaper and faster.

As Lockheed Martin and Raytheon fret, America's Patriot missile stockpiles are being dangerously depleted.

According to the CSIS, the United States has expended approximately 65% of its pre-war Patriot interceptor inventory during the ongoing conflict with Iran. Before the war, the US had an estimated 2,330 Patriot interceptors. As of July 2026, that number has fallen to roughly 800. THAAD inventories have fallen from 452 to an estimated 250. The United States is running out of missiles.

And yet, when an ally offers to produce more of these missiles (at lower cost, at greater scale, without burdening American taxpayers) the response is denial.

But why?

The reluctance of the defense contractors is the logical outcome of an incentive structure that rewards scarcity over abundance. President Trump has demanded that the US defense industry triple its output, but manufacturers are reluctant to invest their own money in expanding production facilities. Why would they? Expanding production capacity requires massive capital investment. And if production increases, prices fall, reducing profit margins on each unit sold. The defense industry's business model is built on high margins, low volume, and guaranteed demand. The current system rewards contractors for producing expensive, cutting-edge systems in small quantities rather than cheap, effective systems in large quantities.

And the big contractors are afraid of being outcompeted.

The Solution

The New Nationalists of America demand an end to the profiteer state.

First, the production of critical defense systems must be brought under public ownership. The current model, where private contractors extract maximum profit from minimum production, is a threat to national security. When a nation cannot produce the weapons it needs to defend itself, it has already surrendered. Public ownership would allow the state to prioritize production volume over shareholder returns, ensuring that America has the weapons it needs when it needs them.

Second, defense procurement must prioritize mass production at low cost over limited production at high margin. The United States needs tens of thousands of affordable, effective weapons, not hundreds of exquisitely expensive, bespoke systems that take years to build. The Ukrainian model, where drones are produced by the millions and missiles by the tens of thousands, is the model America must adopt.

Third, the United States must embrace allied production. If Ukraine can produce Patriot missiles faster and cheaper, America should be encouraging that production. Allied industrial capacity is American industrial capacity. Every Patriot missile built in Kyiv is one less missile that must be built in the United States, and one more missile available to defend American interests.

Fourth, the revolving door between the Pentagon and defense contractors must be closed. When former executives become procurement officials and procurement officials become executives, the public interest is systematically subordinated to shareholder value. The "revolving door" that Eisenhower warned of has become a turnstile of corruption.

Fifth, the export of raw resources must be restricted until domestic manufacturing needs are fully met. America will not ship its strategic materials abroad while its own defense industrial base crumbles.

Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the "unwarranted influence" of the military-industrial complex. Today, that influence has become so entrenched that it threatens to destroy American security. The American defense establishment is not designed to win wars. It is designed to generate profits. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are not blocking Ukrainian Patriot production because they fear technology theft. They are blocking it because they fear competition. They know that if Ukraine can produce these missiles faster and cheaper, the American people will begin to ask a dangerous question:

Why can't we?