The Pentagon is facing a severe depletion of its missile stockpiles following large-scale strikes against Iran. To rebuild US arsenals and accelerate weapons production, Deputy Pentagon Chief Steve Feinberg has launched a sweeping overhaul of military procurement. His strategy draws on Wall Street-style crisis management techniques normally used to turn around struggling corporations, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports, citing sources familiar with the effort.
The restructuring gained urgency after President Donald Trump personally ordered Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth to address the weapons shortage. According to the newspaper, the directive followed reports that Washington had been forced to suspend strikes on Iran as its supplies of precision-guided munitions rapidly dwindled.
Feinberg sees a critical shortage of experienced manufacturing executives as one of the biggest obstacles to restoring production. He acknowledged that the Pentagon’s procurement teams and other personnel are highly capable in their respective fields but lack the specialized expertise needed to manage industrial operations and production processes.
To tackle these weaknesses, Feinberg has established a new management structure under his direct supervision. He has also brought in private-sector specialists to examine problems across the defense industry. As part of the initiative, the Pentagon allocated $300 million to Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting firm known for restructuring financially and operationally troubled businesses.
The department has also recruited approximately 300 former senior executives, including veterans of the automotive industry, to inspect defense contractors' manufacturing facilities and identify production inefficiencies. Some of these outside specialists are being paid as much as $170 an hour.
Technology is another major element of the overhaul. Defense technology company Palantir secured a contract worth up to $244 million to deploy its War Machine analytics platform, designed to improve efficiency and coordination across military manufacturing operations.
The urgency behind these changes stems from the enormous quantities of ammunition consumed during the US military campaign against Iran. According to the Pentagon’s inspector general, the strikes have already burned through $22 billion worth of munitions.
The scale of missile expenditure has been particularly severe. The New York Times previously reported that American forces fired the equivalent of ten years of Tomahawk cruise missile production during the campaign. The United States also exhausted its entire inventory of low-observable missiles and used up an amount of Patriot air defense ammunition equivalent to two years of manufacturing output.
Feinberg’s procurement overhaul is therefore focused on rapidly replenishing US weapons stockpiles after the massive depletion caused by the strikes against Iran.