On this week’s Defense & Aerospace Report Business Roundtable, sponsored by Bell, Dr. “Rocket” Ron Epstein of Bank of America Securities and Richard Aboulafia of the AeroDynamic advisory consultancy join host Vago Muradian to discuss Wall Street’s strong start to 2026 although President Trump’s executive order on dividends, share buybacks and executive compensation hit defense stocks before they rebounded on the president’s announcement that US defense spending would increase 50 percent to $1.5 trillion; Lockheed Martin’s tentative agreement with the Pentagon to invest billions to dramatically ramp Patriot missile production as Trump criticizes RTX for not reportedly making a similar deal; Britain and France commit to supporting Ukraine with troops to enforce a ceasefire as Russia fires a conventional version of its nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile into Western Ukraine; implications of US rhetoric to use force to take Greenland from Denmark in the wake of the US operation in Venezuela despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling US lawmakers that America wants to buy the world’s largest island from Copenhagen; Washington approved the sake of P-8 anti-submarine aircraft to Denmark as France makes good on its pledge to replace aging American radar planes with new Swedish ones, Austria turns to Italy for new trainers, and Israel expands its F-15 fleet with new EX jets from Boeing; Alaska Airlines orders 110 Boeing 737 Max jetliners including Max 10 jets — the largest model of the popular aircraft — that were just cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration to move into the second phase of certification; US operations in Venezuela and seizing the country’s sanctioned shadow tanker fleet illustrates the continuing utility of manned military rotorcraft; and takeaways from Bank of America’s annual defense and aerospace conference.
