The recent budget deal has handed U.S. defense companies an extra $75 billion over the next two years as the Pentagon boosts spending on aircraft, missiles, tanks and maintaining older equipment.
The Pentagon proposal unveiled Monday alongside the White House budget request for fiscal 2019—which starts on Oct. 1—includes spending more than $470 billion over the next two years on buying weapons and military research, a 20% increase from the Obama administration’s final plan in fiscal 2017.
“I had to actually go practice how to say the word ‘growth’ a few times before this call,” Mike Petters, chief executive of Huntington Ingalls