America’s defense industry finds itself at a crossroads, caught between the demands of global conflict and the strains of its own workforce. As wars in Ukraine and the Middle East stretch U.S. weapons stockpiles thin, a wave of labor unrest is threatening to further disrupt the already strained production lines. Meanwhile, the decision by President Donald Trump to withhold Tomahawk cruise missiles from Ukraine has ignited fierce debate over the risks of escalation and the limits of American involvement in foreign wars.
During a high-profile meeting at the White House on October 17, 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed President Trump to approve the transfer of Tomahawk missiles for use against Russia. Trump, however, stood firm in his refusal, explaining, “It’s beyond the money. You know, we need Tomahawks, we need a lot of other weapons that we’re sending to Ukraine, and one of the reasons we want to get this war over is exactly that. It’s not easy for us to give; you’re talking about massive numbers of very powerful weapons.” According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), America’s ammunition shortage stems from years of supplying multiple wars simultaneously. The group noted in its October 2025 report that a single Ukrainian artillery battery can burn through more U.S.-made 155mm shells in a single day than some American units used during the entire Iraq War.
Even at a current production pace of roughly 40,000 shells per month, U.S. output lags far behind Ukraine’s needs. The Army has announced ambitious plans to triple production to 100,000 rounds a month by summer 2026. Yet, FPRI warns that Ukraine could exhaust that amount in mere weeks. Meanwhile, the U.S. has also been called upon to support Israel, with Iran’s 12 days of missile strikes forcing the U.S. ally to draw down between 15 and 20 percent of Washington’s global stockpile of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors.
Trump, defending his decision to withhold Tomahawks, emphasized America’s own security needs: “I have an obligation also, though, to make sure that we’re completely stocked up as a country because you never know what’s going to happen in war and peace, right?” he told Zelenskyy and reporters, urging a focus on ending the conflict rather than extending U.S. weapons transfers.
But the production bottleneck isn’t just about foreign wars. As Politico reported, nearly 1,000 Lockheed Martin employees who assemble missile components, surveillance systems, and other defense hardware walked off the job in May 2025 after failing to secure a new labor contract. Workers rejected the company’s offer of a 3 to 4 percent raise, demanding double-digit pay hikes to offset inflation. The unrest didn’t end there: about 3,000 additional defense workers joined the strike, and another 2,500 employees building nuclear submarines came close to walking out before a last-minute deal was reached.
The tension between labor and management is palpable. Lockheed’s CEO, quoted by Politico, said, “We are taking the shareholders’ interest into account and all the things we talked about, which should help improve our margins. Even though it may result in some difficult discussions with some of the customer base.” The stakes are high for workers as well. “Supposedly, by the end of this year I’ll be making close to $23 an hour. So with that, I should be able to afford something and be OK. But we’ll see,” one machinist told the outlet. “Maybe next year.”
This wave of labor unrest follows a seven-week walkout involving 33,000 defense workers last fall, which ended with a new contract guaranteeing a 38% pay raise. Yet, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in 2023 that if the war in Ukraine continued into 2025—and it has—it could take six years to rebuild U.S. ammunition stockpiles to normal peacetime levels, not counting the time needed to prepare for another major conflict.
The debate over Tomahawk missiles has brought the risks of escalation into sharp relief. According to Politico, Zelenskyy left Washington empty-handed, declining to comment on Tomahawks because the U.S. “doesn’t want escalation.” Ukraine already possesses a formidable arsenal, including U.S.-made ATACM ballistic missiles with a range of nearly 200 miles, UK/French-made Shadow/SCALP missiles with a 155-mile reach, Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, and a variety of air defense systems. The ATACM missiles are suitable for tactical use near the front lines, but the Tomahawk, with its 1,500-mile range and GPS terrain-matching guidance, is a different beast entirely—a “strategic” weapon capable of striking deep into enemy territory, including Moscow, which is just 500 miles from Kiev.
As the Foreign Policy Research Institute and other analysts warn, supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks could raise the conflict to the level of strategic warfare between the homelands of Ukraine and Russia, with the U.S. directly implicated as the supplier of these powerful weapons. The potential for catastrophic escalation is real. If Ukraine were to attack Moscow or a Russian air base with Tomahawk missiles, Russia’s official doctrine suggests a range of retaliatory measures, including the possible use of nuclear weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his advisors could retaliate against NATO, perhaps by bombing military bases in Ukraine and neighboring NATO nations such as Poland. They might begin with conventional weapons while holding tactical nuclear weapons in reserve, or they could escalate directly to battlefield nuclear arms like the Iskander short-range ballistic missile or Kalibr cruise missile, with yields from 1 to 50 kilotons of TNT equivalent. For context, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of about 15 kilotons.
The U.S. stores about 100 B61 tactical nuclear gravity bombs at air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. These bombs, which have variable yields between 0.3 and 50 kilotons, could be loaded onto NATO fighter aircraft and dropped on Russia as retaliation for any Russian tactical nuclear use. Pentagon war games indicate that once the nuclear threshold has been crossed, escalation to all-out strategic nuclear war is highly likely. The first strategic forces used would be Russian and U.S. land-based ICBMs, each packing a 300-kiloton bomb, followed by bomber and submarine-based nuclear forces.
Such an exchange could devastate most of the Northern Hemisphere. While the Southern Hemisphere might remain largely undamaged, human civilization could be permanently reduced to medieval or even stone-age levels, as described in Annie Jacoben’s book Nuclear War: A Scenario. The risks are sobering, and they underscore the gravity of the decisions now facing U.S. leaders.
As America’s defense industry grapples with strikes and shortages, and policymakers weigh the perils of escalation, the world watches closely. The choices made in Washington—on factory floors and in the Oval Office—may shape not only the outcome of today’s conflicts, but the very future of civilization itself.
