U.S. Quadruples PrSM Missile Production Following Combat Use Against Iran.

Lockheed Martin will quadruple production of the Precision Strike Missile after its combat debut in Operation Epic Fury.

The production surge follows White House pressure on the defense industry to replenish weapons drawn down during strikes on Iran, with new Pentagon framework agreements involving Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, and Honeywell. Designed to replace ATACMS, PrSM delivers precision fires beyond 400 km from HIMARS and M270 launchers while doubling missile load per pod, significantly increasing battlefield strike density.

Read also: U.S. Deploys 500km PrSM Ballistic Missile in First Combat Strike on Iran.

Lockheed Martin is ramping up Precision Strike Missile production as the U.S. Army expands long-range strike capacity for high-intensity operations, including against Iran. Fired from HIMARS and M270 launchers, PrSM boosts precision fires against high-value targets at extended range (Picture source: U.S. DoW/Lockheed Martin).

The production move follows the White House push that gathered leading defense executives after U.S. strikes on Iran began drawing down inventories of critical weapons. Reuters reported that President Donald Trump met executives from seven major firms, including Lockheed Martin, on March 6, while administration officials pressed industry to accelerate output and invest capital ahead of final contract awards; a March 25 Pentagon announcement then formalized framework agreements with Lockheed, BAE Systems, and Honeywell to expand war-related production.

PrSM is the Army’s replacement for the MGM-140 ATACMS and is built to strike fixed targets far deeper than conventional rocket artillery. Army and Lockheed Martin material describe Increment 1 as a missile able to engage anti-access and area-denial targets at ranges greater than 400 km, with official Lockheed product data listing a 60-499+ km envelope, inertial navigation with GPS guidance, and an enhanced lethality warhead designed for the PrSM target set.

What makes the weapon tactically significant is not range alone, but magazine density and launcher compatibility. PrSM remains compatible with the M142 HIMARS and M270-family launchers, yet each container holds two missiles instead of one ATACMS round, effectively doubling the number of deep-strike shots available per pod and increasing salvo density from the same launcher fleet. Earlier Army reporting also described the missile as smaller than ATACMS while preserving comparable destructive effect, which matters for dispersed, shoot-and-scoot fires in contested theaters.

That combination gives U.S. land forces a weapon optimized for the first 24 to 72 hours of a high-end campaign. In operational terms, PrSM is intended to suppress or destroy missile batteries, command posts, radars, air-defense nodes, logistics hubs, and other high-value targets that enable an adversary’s anti-access network. Its first combat use during Operation Epic Fury is therefore strategically important: it signals that the Army now has a combat-validated land-based deep-strike option that can contribute directly to joint targeting against Iran without waiting for a long development tail.

The industrial acceleration also builds on a program that had already entered a more mature phase before the Iran conflict. The Army granted PrSM Increment 1 Milestone C approval on July 2, 2025, moving the missile into production and deployment, and on March 28, 2025, awarded Lockheed Martin a $4.9 billion IDIQ contract whose first delivery order covered 400 Increment 1 missiles. In the Army’s FY2026 missile procurement book, the service recorded 98 PrSM missiles in FY2024 actuals and 230 in FY2025 enacted procurement, showing that the line was already expanding before the latest surge decision.

Lockheed Martin says it has invested more than $7 billion since Trump’s first term to expand capacity across priority systems, including about $2 billion for munitions acceleration, and that the PrSM program already has more than 115,000 square feet of dedicated U.S. operations space with more than 400 employees supporting it. Those figures matter because missile output is constrained not only by final assembly, but by tooling, test infrastructure, electronics, energetics, guidance components, and second-tier suppliers. In practice, quadrupling production means broadening the entire supply chain, not simply adding shifts at one plant.

Why Washington wants the expansion now is straightforward. The Iran war has reinforced a lesson already visible in Ukraine and in prolonged air and missile campaigns elsewhere: modern combat is won not just by having exquisite munitions, but by having enough of them for sustained operations. Reuters reported that the White House meeting was convened because recent operations had drawn down weapons stocks, while Breaking Defense described congressional concern that the campaign could become a numbers problem as Iran continued launching missiles and drones. Public Pentagon messaging has insisted current stocks are sufficient, but the policy response clearly shows the administration does not want adequacy today to become scarcity tomorrow.

For operations against Iran, PrSM offers a particularly useful blend of reach, survivability, and responsiveness. A mobile land launcher firing from dispersed positions can strike fixed targets at depth without exposing aircraft to the same level of risk, can relocate quickly after launch, and can complicate Iranian targeting by presenting a distributed firing architecture rather than a small number of high-signature airbases or ships. In tactical terms, it gives theater commanders a weapon that can be held in reserve for time-sensitive deep fires, used to open corridors through an air-defense network, or employed to re-attack infrastructure nodes that recover after the first wave. That logic also complements related coverage of PrSM Increment 2 and HIMARS modernization.

The deeper strategic reason for expanding production is that munitions shortages are prejudicial long before stocks actually run dry. Commanders begin husbanding rounds, target lists shrink, the pace of operations slows, and adversaries learn that they can outlast the magazine depth of a technologically superior force. Inference from the current policy scramble is unavoidable: the Pentagon wants larger PrSM inventories because long-range precision strike is no longer a niche capability for occasional high-value targets, but an expected, repeatable requirement in any serious campaign. That makes production capacity itself part of deterrence.

PrSM’s importance will grow further as the family evolves. Army acquisition reporting shows Increment 2 is designed to add a multi-mode seeker for moving maritime and relocatable land targets, while Army modernization material points to later variants with substantially greater range. Read together with broader reporting on U.S. long-range precision fires, Lockheed Martin’s March 25 announcement is therefore more than a wartime industrial adjustment. It is a signal that the United States wants PrSM to become a high-volume operational weapon at the core of Army deep fires, not merely a better ATACMS.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.