The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pa., is shown in 2024. GM Defense and Lockheed Martin announced a partnership Tuesday that will focus in part on munitions. File Photo courtesy Ukrainian Presidential Press Office | License Photo
June 16 (UPI) — General Motors announced a new partnership Tuesday with Lockheed Martin to “strengthen America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base.”
The automaker said in a press release that the U.S. Department of Defense facilitated the collaboration.
The partnership will focus on strengthening defense supply chains, advancing manufacturing and design capabilities and evaluating opportunities to expand production capacity, the release said.
Bruce Brown, vice president of strategy at GM Defense, said it will focus on munitions and more, CNBC reported.
“What makes this moment especially important is that the country needs more than great technology,” Brown said in a call with reporters. “It also needs the capacity to build, scale and deliver reliably. This is where GM can help. Across our company, we bring deep experience in advanced engineering, digital development, supply chain discipline and manufacturing at scale.”
Lockheed Martin is expected to invest $9 billion through 2030 to modernization facilities, while GM is expected to spend $7 billion on research and development.
“America’s security depends not only on developing advanced technologies but on our ability to produce them quickly, reliably and at scale,” Frank St. John, Lockheed Martin chief operating officer, said in the release.
This partnership announcement comes as the United States approaches the end of its fourth month in a war with Iran, a conflict that has drained munitions stock and placed U.S. arms deals and deliveries to allies on hold.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told a Senate committee in April that it could take “months and years” to replace U.S. munitions used inthe war with Iran. The department requested a nearly 50% increase in funding for 2027.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he’d send a deal to end the war with Iran to Congress for approval. Trump and Vice President JD Vance signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the war Sunday, but it has not been released to the public.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about restoring commercial fishing access to areas of the Pacific during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday. Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo
