Christian Davies

The real question for these companies is not are they willing buyers for their products?

It's can they produce enough of them at a rate quickly enough?

So, for example, this year's US defense budget only gave money to fund about 58 Tomahawk missiles.

It's estimated that the US used around 1,000 in the first six weeks or so of the conflict.

So we know that demand is there.

The real question is whether the US defense industrial base is capable at the moment of producing it at the rate that the government wants.

So where we are at the moment is the Trump administration is proposing a huge rise in defense spending, up from around a trillion a year at the moment to $1.5 trillion.

This is not only a very, very large proposed increase and therefore relatively contentious.

It's coupled with unhappiness surrounding this specific conflict, the Iran conflict, over the amount of transparency that the administration has given.

And so Democrats who would be needed to support this are not really in a mind to do it.

Interestingly, investors seem to be tracking this very closely.

Some analysts have shown that the higher the chances that the Republicans maintain control of the Senate, the more confidence there is among defense investors in the sector.

Christian Davies is the FT's US industry correspondent.