Lloyd Austin’s Raytheon Sees Big Business as Result of Ukraine War
Austin, who has been a significant proponent of ‘giving Ukraine what it needs to win,’ earned seven figures from the defense companies before joining Biden’s revolving door from the private sector
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Raytheon, the U.S. military contract that made Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin a rich man when he was a board member, has been tasked with upping its production of the fifth-generation Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile intended for international allies.
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Paul Ferraro, president of Air Power at Raytheon, said the AIM-120C-8 will be available for Ukraine in three to five years, according to Defense One, the military news website. The development is making gains and the missile was successfully fired from an F-15C Eagle in a test flight back in June.
“When bad things do happen, like Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s great to see that we have weapons and systems that can help in the fight for democracy” - Gregory Hayes, the CEO of Raytheon
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The report said Ferraro pointed to dwindling stockpiles and said Raytheon is “in the process of continuing to ramp up our production on D-3 and our C-8s. We've received contracts for more quantities of AMRAAMs [Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles] in our last couple of lots of AMRAAMs than we've ever received in the history of the program.”
The report said Raytheon usually produces up to 800 of these missiles each year, but now will produce about 1,200. The company just received a $1.15 billion contract to produce these missiles.
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Raytheon has been flush with contracts since the start of the war. The U.S, awarded a Lockheed Martin-Raytheon joint venture $309 million in contracts for the Javelin program and the U.S. Army said in May that it awarded a contract worth $625 million to Raytheon for Stinger missiles to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine.
Gregory Hayes, the CEO of Raytheon, gave an interview in March in the Harvard Business Review, and it seems like he thinks he’s doing the work of God.
“When bad things do happen, like Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s great to see that we have weapons and systems that can help in the fight for democracy,” he said. “And I think that’s what keeps our people coming to work every day, this singular mission around defending democracy and connecting the world.”
Austin, who sat on the board of Raytheon, America’s second largest defense contractor before he was appointed by Joe Biden to become U.S. Secretary of Defense, has been one of Washington’s biggest proponents of more war in Ukraine since the outbreak back in February 2022.
He famously said in the early weeks of the war that it was the Biden administration’s goal to see Russia weakened “to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told Congress in March that the “Ukraine conflict showed that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level that we needed it to be to generate munitions.”
“Those are going to matter a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, because even if the conflict in Ukraine dies down, and nobody can predict whether that will happen, Ukraine is going to need a military that can defend the territory it has clawed back.”
OpenSecrets.org reported on Austin’s close ties with defense contractors. In 2016, after the election of Donald Trump, Austin exited the military for the riches promised by the private sector.
He “assumed positions on the corporate boards of steel manufacturing giant Nucor Corporation, Tenet Healthcare and United Technologies, which merged with defense contractor Raytheon Company in 2020. The merged corporation, Raytheon Technologies, is among the top five top lobbying spenders in the defense sector and spent almost $11 million on lobbying in 2020. Austin earned seven figures from the defense companies.”
TREND FORECAST: We maintain our forecast that Russia will defeat the Ukraine government despite the billions of dollars of lethal weaponry being sent to Ukraine by the U.S. and NATO. Yet, there is not a word in the Western media about a possible Ukraine defeat, nor are there any pushes for peace by the United Nations to end the slaughter and destruction and negotiate a ceasefire.
TRENDPOST: Gerald Celente, the publisher of the Trends Journal, accused the United States and NATO of prolonging the war by sending more armaments to Ukraine that will lengthen the war, lead to more deaths and destruction of the nation rather than taking ceasefire measures to negotiate for peace.
Celente has pointed out that Napoleon sent 420,000 brave young men to defeat Russia and 410,000 were killed. He also pointed to Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa campaign that resulted in the deaths of 27 million Russians, who still ended up defeating Germany.