Space Technology

Capacity, Not Contracts: The Real Story Behind This Summer’s Defence Awards

This summer, the US Navy awarded $76.6 billion in submarine contracts. Lockheed Martin agreed a seven-year plan to more than triple PAC-3 missile production. The headlines called it a spending story. It isn't. In both cases, demand was never the constraint, industrial capacity was. Welders, dry docks, and assembly lines take years to build, and no amount of new orders changes that overnight. The real question for investors: which companies can actually convert backlog into throughput, and when will that show up in margins?