It has been more than 2 months since the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine, the Ukrainian side has lost a lot of weapons and equipment, and the military industry has also suffered heavy losses. In order to support Ukraine's long-term confrontation with Russia, the Western countries led by the United States tightened their belts and provided Ukraine with a large amount of military equipment and strategic materials. However, the Ukrainian side continues to urge Western countries to increase aid, making countries miserable. But the U.S. military-industrial complex has benefited greatly from this crisis.
According to CBS, James Tayclett, CEO of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest weapons company, revealed that they are working to double the production of Javelin portable anti-tank missiles. At present, the production capacity of the Javelin missile is 2100 pieces per year, and Loma hopes to increase it to an annual output of 4000 pieces.
According to the U.S. government, since the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis on February 24, the United States has provided Ukraine with 5,500 Javelin missiles, one of the largest numbers of weapons aided by the United States to Ukraine. The Ukrainian side estimates that up to 500 Javelin missiles were fired in a day in the first few weeks of the war against Russian armored targets.
According to statistics from the open source information analysis website Oryxspioenkop, Russia has lost about 2,000 different types of armored vehicles, including 643 tanks, 344 armored fighting vehicles, 702 infantry fighting vehicles and 108 anti-mine anti-ambush vehicles, among others. Although there is no specific data on how many of these were destroyed by Javelin missiles, there is no doubt about the huge demand for anti-tank weapons.
The Javelin anti-tank missile javelin was developed to meet the needs of the U.S. military's next-generation anti-tank weapon system. In June 1996, the first Javelin missiles were officially delivered to the U.S. Army. The Javelin missile is a third-generation anti-tank missile that has been launched and, at the beginning of its equipment, was also the most advanced anti-tank missile system in the world.
The Javelin anti-tank missiles are not only equipped with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, but also extensively with U.S. allies and specific regions. It is a weapon widely used by the United States and other allied forces in the Theater of Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to Lockheed Martin, before the Ukraine crisis, the Javelin missile system had been used in more than 5,000 battles since its commission in 1996. Now that number has grown dramatically.
In fact, the Javelin anti-tank missiles, especially the early models, are no longer representative of advanced technology. The early "Javelin" missile seeker used a 64X64 yuan infrared focal plane array gaze imaging device, and later some models of seekers were improved to 128X128 components, which improved the target resolution, but there is still a big gap in technology compared with similar products in other countries. However, there are often deep political reasons behind the arms trade, and the US arms exports have long occupied the top of the list, behind which is the strong influence of the US government.
On the other hand, in order to maintain its hegemonic position, the US government needs to rely on strong military strength, and it must be deeply tied to the US military industrial group. In turn, the US military industry group can take the opportunity to influence the decision-making of the US government. Looking at the wars launched by the United States and the military conflicts that have broken out in other countries, there is a shadow of the US military-industrial group behind it.
Just as when talking about the reasons that led Loma to plan to increase production of Javelin missiles, Tyclett unsurprisingly regarded Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and other countries as "troublemakers", he believes that even if the crisis in Ukraine is over, new hot spots may appear in other regions, and Loma needs to plan ahead, because the supply chain may take months or even years to meet this type of growth. It can be seen from this that the turmoil in the world is what the US military industrial group likes to hear, and even in order to achieve its goal, it will not hesitate to stir up trouble.