Shutdown Showdown, Quantico Conclave and U.S. Foreign Military Sales

[MUSIC PLAYING]
TONY BERTUCA: Yeah, there's all sorts of ways that this could play out. As you said, it's fairly unprecedented. Although we've had shutdowns before this one, this one feels a little bit different.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: From DOD to Congress, and from the White House to Wall Street, the NatSec Need-to-Know podcast, an unrehearsed podcast presenting insightful discussion and forecasts of the major national security and defense issues of the day. Welcome to the NatSec Need-to-Know. We've got our reporters roundtable to discuss the top national security issues in Washington and preview what to expect over the next several weeks.
Joining me is a murderer's row of experienced Washington editors and reporters. We've got Tony Bertuca from InsideDefense, Aaron Mehta from Breaking Defense, and Robert Wall from Aviation Week. They've each covered Washington and the Pentagon for decades and are as well-sourced as anyone in town. Thank you all for joining. Let's get after it.
All right, gentlemen, thanks for joining me, as always. Happy day three of another US government shutdown to all who celebrate. We are in the trenches, as they would say. It appears both sides really don't have much to talk about right now, although the Senate will be holding votes again pretty much on the same legislation from what I understand. Although, I think the Dems have a 10-day patch they're going to offer, but both sides are talking past one another.
And President Donald Trump is just having fun with his social media account, for those of you who have not seen some of the AI-infused stuff that he has been posting. So we're in the midst of a shutdown. Again, we've talked about this one. This one is different than in prior ones. So I guess what I'll do is turn it over to maybe Tony first and see what he's been hearing, any impacts to the DOD, and if there's any way out of this ditch.
TONY BERTUCA: Absolutely. So shutdown. The Defense Department operates a lot differently than other government agencies during shutdown, right? They still furlough plenty of civilians. So according to DOD's guidance-- this is just on the furloughs-- they said about 741,000 civilians were working for DOD. And so that meant they would be furloughing around 335,000 civilian employees. So they've got 182,000 employees who are doing non-appropriation work, 223,000 or so for protecting life and property.
Meanwhile, other activities that are going to continue include lots of ongoing contracting work, ongoing acquisition activities that don't require new FY26 money. One of the things we also saw was in the department's shutdown implementation guidance, they decided they were going to list their highest priorities of stuff they would fund during this period. And of course, as everybody knows, they've got money from budget reconciliation, the One Big, Beautiful Bill. A little unclear how they're going to apportion that money and where it is.
But the top priorities, they say, are secure the US Southern border, Middle East operations, Golden Dome for America, depot maintenance, shipbuilding, and critical munitions. So a lot of stuff is going to continue going for DOD during shutdown. The one thing that people have talked about that could maybe be the force of compromise is the military is going to continue working. Everybody in uniform, they don't get furloughed. But they're going to work unpaid.
So the next military pay period is October 15. So if Congress doesn't do something to ensure that they get paid during the shutdown, that might be one of the things that kind of is like, all right, the shutdown might not go past the 15th because who wants to be responsible for not paying uniformed military? So a lot to unpack there, but that's the state of things for DOD at the moment.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: So again, this is unprecedented in a lot of ways, right? Russ Vought at OMB is just itching to dabble with some executive branch authorities in terms of rifts and stuff like that. May or may not be legal. And I'm sure he's happy to go to court. But as you mentioned, the one thing that's different this time is not only DOD, but DHS, FAA, they all have money, mandatory dollars, that they receive from the One Big, Beautiful Act. And I wonder. I'm not sure.
And I'm not sure because this has never happened before, but could OMB use some of that money to pay salaries in the department, right? Because troops are going to work borders. ICE is going to work. FAA air traffic controllers, TSA. Again, I just don't know. Maybe you'd have to reprogram that money through Congress. But then is a Republican-controlled Congress going to care? I think there's a lot of potential variability in that.
TONY BERTUCA: Yeah, and you could imagine there's going to be, maybe, a dramatic scenario here where the White House tries to declare some sort of emergency by which it can just say we're going to pay the troops during the shutdown. And that might be a major political move for them that they think is a great idea. That could increase pressure on Democrats if, at that point, Democrats are still trying to stay unified against the shutdown.
Yeah, there's all sorts of ways that this could play out. As you said, it's fairly unprecedented. Although we've had shutdowns before this one, this one feels a little bit different.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Yeah, and you brought up a point. It's a point that I've made to folks. DOD did list its priorities. It does seem like that is a ranked order of priorities almost. So Southern border, Middle East ops, Golden Dome, depot maintenance, shipbuilding, critical munitions.
To be quite honest, I've told folks that that's a pretty useful template for thinking about this DOD's priorities, right? And when you look at the PB26 relook and the areas that protected and whatnot, again, that's what this administration really wants to focus on.
TONY BERTUCA: And another thing to point out, too, is that they are continuing, as an exempted activity, to plan FY27, which people seem to tell me is pretty interesting, right? Why has that been considered an exempted activity? So I don't know, right? It's one of those things that maybe isn't entitled, but is at the discretion of the secretary. And they've chosen to make planning FY27 an accepted activity. All the budgeteers are at work at the Pentagon still putting together FY27.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Right. OK, so we'll see how the vote today goes. As you mentioned, October 15, troop paychecks. I think maybe October 20 might be Fed civilian paychecks. Then you get to November 1, if we stretch that long, ACA open enrollment.
People will see those health care subsidies go away. And so you'll have a pocketbook, checkbook impact on that. And then potentially, we slide all the way to Thanksgiving and travel disruptions. Just thinking about catalysts. But we'll see how this new experiment goes.
All right, I think we'll just shift gear for a second. And maybe since we've got Robert on, we've had a bunch of air power stuff as of late. We had the AFA conference here in DC. A bunch of program news there. We've got Lockheed Martin finally under contract for lots 18 and 19. So as you think about all the things going on in air power, Robert, what's been top of mind for you?
ROBERT WALL: I think just frankly getting some clarity on what the Air Force leadership will look like since it was so uncertain after General Allvin said he was stepping down early. So the nomination of General Wilsbach. And it's likely that he'll get confirmed. So I think that's, from an air power perspective, really interesting.
On F-35, it's kind of striking, actually. In December, they had a handshake agreement on this, and it's taken this long to get it on contract. It's on contract pretty much as planned and roughly at the funding level that we all expected, but it does still strike me that that is a long time. And we wonder, what took so long to get there?
I wasn't there, I must admit, but it didn't seem that exciting. A lot of the stuff we've kind of known about. Yes, there was a bit of sniping back and forth on collaborative combat aircraft. But otherwise, a lot of support for F-47. Not a huge surprise. They got another B-21 test aircraft flying just ahead of time.
From my perspective, and maybe Aaron feels differently, I didn't feel like there was a ton of drama there. So, yeah, just from a journalistic perspective, perhaps a bit dull.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Yeah, and maybe that's good given all the programs. I noticed a little bit of a focus on Sentinel, right? That program still in the midst of a restructure. You get some positive momentum on B-21.
ROBERT WALL: Yeah, I think the point you're making is a good one. In a way, if you're from the Air Force perspective, your main modernization programs look in pretty good shape, right? Bomber, fighter plan is laid out. CCAs are underway. Sentinel, yeah, a bit of talk, but it's kind of moving forward. The fact that they are starting to talk about tanker and future tanker program, which is often not their highest priority, obviously, seems to me to suggest the Air Force feels pretty comfortable with where they are.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Yeah, and I'm going to give a hat tip to InsideDefense, although I don't think this is Tony specifically. They did post the J&A, the Justification and Approval, for the expanded KC-46A buy. And for those subscribers out there that can get past the paywall, or you hackers, or just find it, the Air Force J&A, they talk about an extended five-year buy of 75 tankers that will be the bridge.
There are 188 under the original Boeing contract, which, again, just is amazing to me that, in 2011, Boeing signed up to deliver 188 fixed-price tankers, which, of course, we all know how that's played out. I don't think anyone will walk into that train wreck again. But I am also breaking my arm a little bit, patting myself on the back because I've been calling this for two years, keeping KC-46A in production. New contract, probably a profitable one for Boeing.
And then, as you alluded to, that is a bridge to NGAS, or whatever they're calling their future tanker. And who knows what that's going to be, whether that's going to work. I guess I'm not allowed to use betting terms, but I think Boeing may wind up building more than another 75 tankers once you have those in production. I am dubious about a stealthy tanker, but we'll see. So I think that's good news for Boeing on the tanker side. Robert, I don't know if you have anything you want to pile on, or Tony.
ROBERT WALL: I'd agree on both things. I think that there's a chance for follow-on buy because another future tanker program could slip, of course. Arguably, it was always Boeing's bet that they would be willing to take a bit of a loss early to make it up later. What was interesting to me was when this came up that this was likely going to happen.
If you talk to the Airbus guys, they're like, yeah. They were completely unsurprised and not even particularly, I would say, yeah, yeah, we knew this was going to happen. It was really no shock from the competition, so to speak.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: I would just say, I've been doing a little mathing today. And I need to go back and double check this, but I looked at the contract announcements on F-35 for lots 18 and 19 when they do the breakout because a big part of the drama with F-35 is what's the US piece of it, what's the foreign piece of it, what's the split, all this if the US budget goes down?
I only got to 145 in lot 18, and then 148 in 19. So I know there's been talk about the splits being, I think, what, 296. And so 148 and 148 on the math. So there's three F-35s I can't account for. It's probably a contract mod out there that I haven't found, but I do just mention that.
So look, it is a significant deal. It's important for them. I think probably some of it was negotiations about inflation, right? The jets, I think, are a little pricier, and this is a different environment. So we'll see how that all comes together.
I think we're going to change back. I don't think there's much to talk about, but the Secretary of Defense, or I guess Secretary of War, as he would call himself, and President Donald Trump held a very unusual conclave of senior admirals and generals at Quantico this week. To be honest, I don't think it was the pep rally that the president or secretary thought it might be. I think it's just generally an apolitical group. They kind of sat on their hands a lot.
I know at one point, the president said you can applaud. But that's generally not what that crowd does. From a military perspective, there wasn't really anything new there that I determined, other than the president's fascination with the battleships, which I will say are badass ships.
16-inch shells go a long way and hit with the high explosive weight of a Volkswagen. So they do bring the pain, but I don't think they're coming back anytime soon. So I would just throw it out there for you guys. Anything you noticed or heard that was notable or unusual?
TONY BERTUCA: Sure. I think some of the things that were notable were the things they did not talk about, right? So the secretary got ahead of that a little bit and said, I'm going to be talking about China in another speech. And he also didn't talk about modernization or any of that stuff. That's a huge priority. But he said, oh, I'm going to be talking about that in another upcoming speech.
So the things that I was listening for is now your chance with all of these military strategists to paint your vision for warfare as you see it in the 21st century. Things that could have been said about the coming of artificial intelligence, and autonomy, and what we were learning from Ukraine as a battle lab, none of those things were said, right?
There was a lot on shaving, and exercise, and those types of things. And for that audience, yeah, it just seemed very notable to me that those were the squad leader concerns that you'd bring up, and maybe not some of those broader concepts, announcing things maybe more related to the National Defense Strategy, which is at the SecDef's desk, which people familiar with say maybe you expect Homeland Security to be now equal with China as the challenge you're setting the department up for, things that could have talked about that you didn't in that room.
So, yeah, it definitely was not the pep rally situation, maybe, that they were used to. It had, definitely, the feel of a more political campaign event for the president and the secretary. But, yeah, it just didn't have a lot of news in there for us, other than maybe for my readers, other than what they did not get into.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Yeah, no, actually, that's a great point, I think. Totally fair. You bring together all that brass. I hoped there was maybe a classified session in there with the co-comms to figure out what the game plan is for Venezuela. I'm joking, of course.
But it is an opportunity when you get face to face with all those people. Again, I'm not supposed to use wagering terms, but I would have put money on the fact that you would have had a Trump and Hegseth grand photo op. I haven't seen any big photo. Have we seen that or no?
TONY BERTUCA: I haven't, no.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Aaron, any takeaways from the Quantico conclave?
AARON MEHTA: Yeah, I think you can play the very fun game of looking at the crowd photos and tagging yourself as to which general's reaction you're joining in on. I certainly think there are probably some side conversations that were going on, but there has been no reporting that there were classified sessions, or planning meetings, or anything going on, which, again, to Tony's point, feels like a real lost opportunity.
Let's put aside the question of should this gathering have happened, right? Let's just say it's happening. If you're going to enforce every general to fly in to one place, it should be for an extra day or two to have everyone having these in-person, high-level meetings that you never are going to get to have outside of VTCs. There could be real opportunities there if that had been planned out. It's just there's been absolutely no reporting or signs that that's what happened.
This very much seems like Pete Hegseth decided he wanted to call everyone in a room because he could and lecture them, and then the president showed up and wanted a rally in front of his generals, and everyone went home.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: This is not a shot at you, Aaron, but I do appreciate the term no beardos. No beardos was what the secretary said. So it seems like the beards are going to be banned.
OK, let's see. I think notable, although maybe not on a lot of people's radar, I know there have been some reporting. So I don't expect much reporting to come out of a classified Golden Dome that the Senate received in their skiff, but that apparently happened earlier this week. Or, I guess, on Monday it was scheduled.
And so Golden Dome is the biggest thing in town. It's so hot right now. And it seems like there is, again, a lot of money the DOD already has. General Guetlein has been working on an architecture that there have been some reporting that it was being briefed within the department. I imagine that's going to go from Dep SecDef to SecDef to OMB to the White House. So there probably is a very long chop chain on that, so we'll have to see how that plays out. But, guys, any thoughts on how that's coming together?
ROBERT WALL: I do feel like there does seem to be a sense of they don't have a lot of time if they want to give the president something while he's in office, so they are trying to move with pace. We saw on space-based interceptors, there was a request for proposal or request for information that came out with a pretty tight turnaround time. So I do think there's a lot of activity.
And even if the building doesn't talk about it that much, I think you get a sense from industry that there's obviously a lot of lobbying and everyone is couching their program now as a Golden Dome program. But I do think there's a lot of attention to the opportunities that are arising, especially on the space side, obviously, space-based interceptors and the related sensors that are needed for the constellation.
So we'll see, I guess. I don't have a great sense yet if the general guideline is going to try to keep this more of a-- I don't want to say classified, but keep more tight control over what information is out there or not than perhaps we're used to in the BMDO, MDA days of missile defense. But clearly, there is contracting activity that is happening, even if the money isn't yet flowing.
And as everyone here has pointed out, the fact that it is one of the top things mentioned in the we will continue with this. In fact, during the shutdown period, the fact that it's listed higher than the munitions I think is interesting, given there has been such a focus from some people in the building around the munitions stockpile issue.
TONY BERTUCA: For me, I would say one of the more interesting things that happened in terms of Golden Dome in the last couple of weeks is we saw some really interesting analysis from Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the American Enterprise Institute. My colleague, Jason Sherman, wrote a story for our subscribers about it.
But Harrison uses this new planning budget defense simulator that they've got over there. And he created kind of a build-your-own Golden Dome. And he used that to put together this paper, A Framework for Understanding Costs and Trade-Offs. We had a story about it late last month. So basically, you've just got a lot of speculation about what it's going to include and how ambitious the department, really, the White House, is really going to try to be.
And then just lots of reality checks in terms of the math about how many super thousands of interceptors you would have to have up in the atmosphere if you wanted to get after boost phase, and how you'd have to refresh something-- it could be upwards of a quarter million interceptors every five years-- and the amount of money that the three launch companies we know of could really get after during all of that. That's on the very high end of the more religious, committed we will get boost phase types over at DOD.
And then, yeah, there's more like the lower-end ground midcourse stuff that even that, very ambitious for what the White House has announced for $175 billion without couching whether or not that's the cost of one year, the total cost of the program. There's an awful lot of information that we still need and that Congress probably has more of because it was in classified session. So at the moment, this is where I am. I'm going around asking experts, all right, what can we expect to see? And what we saw out of AEI was a lot of skepticism.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Yeah, no, I think, for me, that's one of the issues about Golden Dome, and particularly the president's timeline to get something fielded, I guess, by the end of his administration or by the end of his term. And I'm assuming he means his second term and not his third term. I will keep making that joke until we know for sure.
But, no, look, there are two pieces of this. There's the terrestrial missile defense as we know it, right? More ground-based radars facing North, right? Alaska, Canada, X-band, sea-based, et cetera. More ground-based interceptors. Maybe expanding the fleet. Maybe throwing missile defense for Guam or Hawaii. Things like that.
But again, even contracting that stuff today, we're literally next year. I don't know if it gets you in a couple of years based on production timelines and all those things for semiconductors, and solid rocket motors, and all that stuff. And then you've got the space-based piece, which is, of course, the holy grail. And that's detection, space-based radar, looking up, looking down, looking sideways in different orbits. LEO, MEO, GEO.
And then the interceptor piece. It's been explained to me for a third grader, because that's what I am, mental equivalent. Just the geometry, and the velocity, and trajectories of this stuff is so incredible that you need those interceptors in constant orbits, variable orbits, being able to do that stuff. So I think that's the holy grail. And that's probably where all the R&D money is going to go.
I know the goal is to hopefully prototype some sort of system, demonstrate a system by the end of, again, Trump's second term to see how that fits. And this is, again, spitballing. I don't have a classification. I don't have clearance anymore, nor would I for this kind of stuff. There are some very high-end threats out there that DOD is worried about, that members of Congress have talked about, fractional orbital bombardment systems, space nukes, et cetera, that are crazy dangerous first strike stuff.
And I think if there's probably a real focus for Golden Dome, it'll be on those high-end threats. And we're probably not going to hear about that stuff. So I don't know. Aaron, I just want to kick it over to you to see if you have any thoughts on where we're at.
AARON MEHTA: Yeah, I think there's clearly a goal to have something ready to go before the 2028 election so that President Trump can point to it as a great success. What that looks like is very much in the air. My colleague Teresa reported that the plan for the space-based interceptors is, instead of giving industry a whole lot of money up front and letting them play with it, they're really pushing industry to spend a lot of their own R&D money on it and giving really tiny amounts of money to help kickstart that for a lot of companies.
That's going to leave it primarily in the hands of the big guys, and probably potentially X out a lot of these smaller space companies who are going to have to supply some of the assets to make a space-based interceptor network possible. So already off to potentially a rocky start there.
We've seen the companies, the primes, say, yeah, we're in on this. And of course, they would be because they see dollar signs everywhere with it. But when push comes to shove, we're going to have to see who is willing to put their own money down and take on a lot of the risk to develop something that has no other customers other than the US government.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: OK, great. No, that's excellent points. And we'll just have to see how all this Golden Dome stuff comes together. And I think the other, maybe, of course, interesting point is how it's going to be in the fiscal '27 budget and where all that money is going to come from. Right now, it's funded out of reconciliation. But guess what? If the Democrats win control of Congress in the midterms, probably not going to be too high on their list if they're writing their own appropriations bills.
All right, let's change gears a little bit. Again, at the top, we mentioned the start of the fiscal year and a shutdown. And so what that also means is the close of a fiscal year, closing the books on fiscal '25. One of the things we do as an annual exercise, we keep tabs on FMS case announcements.
This is when a proposed buy is being notified, announced by State Department and DSCA, Defense Security Cooperation Agency, for F-35s, or Patriot missiles, or whatever that use the FMS process, not the direct commercial sales process. And we view this as a good forward-looking indicator what the pipeline is. These are not yet firm contracts, but they will turn into backlog and revenue for the defense companies that support to provide that work.
So just really quick, notably, this year was not a record. We had two consecutive back-to-back record years. The final number was $112 billion, short of last year's $127. But still, we've had three years over $100 billion a year. Notably, just for keeping score, DOD's annual procurement budget is about $165 billion. So another $100 billion on top of that. Largely procurement, some services is notable.
Companies like Boeing, Lockheed, and RTX are generally the FMS champs. They get the big chunks of that money for major weapons and systems. And it's always a pretty fairly high percentage of their overall revenue.
This year, surprisingly, RTX was the champ. Lockheed had been for several years. RTX, obviously, high demand for offensive and defensive munitions. No surprise. And again, as we've talked about before on prior pods and this one, munitions demand is off the charts.
One notable thing that we did pick out, though, sales to Europe were down 47% year over year, which could be multiple things, right? Could be some of the drama on Trump, on trade and tariffs. Could be F-35. Could be the EU and NATO wanting to buy more from their own domestic defense industries. And then also, Poland and Romania had been big buyers in prior years. They did not come in this year as heavily as they had prior.
I think the other notable thing is the US still posted over $100 billion with Europe being down 47%, which that in and of itself is notable as well. So again, still strong demand. And even if you look back at the last couple of years, there's still work that needs to be contracted and turned into revenue. So I think demand is strong. I'll just throw it open. I guess, probably Robert, from your seat in the UK, that's a pretty front-of-mind topic. So any thoughts on that?
ROBERT WALL: Yeah, I think, first of all, I kind of agree. Obviously, great year for missiles in particular. AIM-120's various versions, the C8's, and the AIM-120D now, the newer version now, really, in the export market. So for RTX, obviously, good news both for air-to-air applications, like the Pols buying it for the F-35s, but then also NASAMS. So the ground-to-air applications. That's kind of struck me just how big a slice of the FMS approvals were in the missile front.
I think you touched on an interesting point. On the European side, the Pols, for both domestic, political reasons, are sitting out this year almost because they're dealing with some stuff there. And so there hasn't been just that much activity. I think almost more interesting necessarily than Europe being down is that one of the big DSCA announcements or approvals was for Patriot for the Danes. And of course, the Danes have gone for the European system.
That is a very interesting contract award because that is something you would normally have assumed would go on to the US. And the fact that they didn't is, I think, a bit of a sign, perhaps the clearest sign on the FMS side right now, that there is maybe a bit of a backlash to the Trump administration starting to play out. Again, many of the European countries have still said they're not turning away from the US, but they clearly are starting to look much more actively, I would say, for alternatives, especially ones out of Europe.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: That's a great point. The one thing, though, and again, being the resident conspiracy theorist that I am, the back and forth about Patriot, and timelines, and do we have enough to sell them, and all that kind of stuff. Maybe there's some people in the administration who still have eyes for Greenland and want them to throw Greenland in the deal for more Patriots. I'm not sure.
The one thing I would say, I think you're absolutely right in terms of spending on the continent, Poland. That's a great observation. And again, I think you are going to start to see some of the capacity within Europe start to ramp up. That is obviously happening in multiple regions, multiple countries. All right, Tony or Aaron, anything on that FMS? I know you guys are primarily Beltway-focused, but thoughts?
TONY BERTUCA: I think just my thought would be, for Europe, it's going to turn into maybe a volume thing, right? Because NATO has said that they're going to increase defense spending. They're going to end up buying US weapons in large numbers. I just think that's one of the things that's just going to force how is going to work out. And then with the Trump administration, FMS is very much diplomacy for this administration. So it's going to get back up there probably.
AARON MEHTA: Yeah, they're never going to get fully off of America. None of the US allies are. As Tony mentioned, FMS, basically, that is foreign policy for the Trump administration. They've made that very clear that economic defense sales are part of if you're having a relationship with the US, you have to be doing them. So it's never going to end. And also, both Tony and Robert are correct. There's just a sheer amount of volume that needs to get produced, and America produces more than any of the allies.
That said, I think Europe is certainly looking at a 5 to 10-year timeline now very seriously, where they're going to be buying a minimum from America and trying to build as much internally. How well that plan plays out, we'll see. But that's clearly where they're signposting they want to go. So short term, I don't expect a huge change. But longer term, why do they need to buy missiles from the US if they can stand up facilities in Europe and buy them locally?
ROBERT WALL: I completely agree with what Aaron just said. For the US, this is not a concern if you're just worried about the quarter, or even the next year's numbers or the year after. I think that is a big question, though. If we assume for a second this environment stays and the funding commitments come in Europe, in 5 to 10 years, Europe could be in a pretty different position. Then it could start hurting the US companies because the foreign sales are good margins, usually.
So I don't think it's an acute problem right now. But very interesting to me was when the German Defense Minister Pistorius was in Washington and asked for Typhon. He also made clear that this will not come at the cost of the investment in a European system that will do something similar. And he said we just need it as a bridging. So if that's really true, then when we get to the end of the bridge, US contractors could be in a worse situation strategically.
ROMAN SCHWEIZER: Yeah, no, I would just say that's a great point. On the one hand, European production capacity is down. And I apologize already, but I will say, perhaps European innovation has been down or they have skipped generation of weapons to be really competitive with US systems. And they've just opted to say, hey, we don't have to do the R&D because we're just going to buy that stuff from the friendly Americans, right?
F-35 would be a perfect example. Patriot would be another example. Some of the munition systems. There's historically been a lot of cooperative NATO developments. And so now, if the Europeans are going to spend, they're going to spend on R&D, on innovation, and maybe try to be at the front end of the R&D curve. And then when you produce better weapons, they get sold more, both within the EU, within the alliance, and potentially globally. So, no, great point.
OK, gentlemen, thanks so much. We have, again, managed to fill more time than most folks probably expect. There's a lot going on. These are some crazy days. Thanks so much for your time. And look forward to doing it again. Hopefully, we won't be in a shutdown then, but we'll see.
[MUSIC PLAYING]