Lockheed Martin gets visit from president, pledges more Javelins

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden stressed the importance of U.S. and allied weapons for Ukraine’s defense Tuesday with a visit to a Lockheed Martin Corp. plant making Javelin anti-tank missiles, which American and NATO officials say have mauled Russia’s invading armored columns.

Biden urged Congress to authorize an additional $33 billion in aid for Ukraine — with lawmakers warning that stockpiles of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps’ premier anti-tank weapon are becoming depleted due to the war.

“We need more money to make sure the United States can continue to send weapons directly to the front lines of freedom in Ukraine,” Biden said during a visit to the Troy, Alabama, factory. Biden praised the anti-tank systems as “some of the best, most effective weapons in our arsenal.”

“You’re making a gigantic difference for these poor sons of guns under such enormous crushing firepower,” Biden said.

The self-guided portable missile system — which weighs just 49 pounds — has proved invaluable to Ukrainian fighters, who can fire on Russian vehicles from as far as 2.5 miles away and then quickly flee. The U.S. has already delivered about 5,000 of the 5,500 Javelins the White House has committed to provide to Ukraine, a senior defense official told reporters Monday.

“They’ve been so important there’s even a story about Ukrainian parents naming their children — not a joke — their newborn children Javelin or Javelina,” Biden said.

The Lockheed factory in Alabama is one of three in the U.S. that produce Javelins, and 265 of the plant’s 600 employees support production of the anti-tank system. The facility can currently produce about 2,100 Javelins per year, the White House said.

The systems have become so synonymous with Ukrainian military success that a Canadian artist selling t-shirts and stickers of Internet memes featuring Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary or Saint Olha of Kyiv clutching a Javelin has raised over $1 million for charity. The Javelin’s arched missile flight allows targeting of an armored vehicle’s weakest points, resulting in a kill rate of over 90% during the Ukraine conflict, according to a White House official.