Why Bond Yields Aren't Falling

The U.S. arms-export sector remains both dominant and increasingly fragmented. According to SIPRI, the U.S. share of global arms exports increased from 35 to 43 percent over the past decade. However, CSIS and Pentagon data indicate that U.S. precision-munition stockpiles were reduced by 50 to 80 percent following a single 39-day conflict with Iran. Both data points are accurate. This report addresses the apparent contradiction by distinguishing between realized exports, which reflect past commitments, and the forward-looking signals to which allied governments are now responding: the United States cannot simultaneously supply a peer conflict and arm its allies, prompting a structural diversification of the global arms supply.

Two wars exposed the gap in real time. Ukraine consumed more than three million U.S. 155mm rounds through January 2025, and the 2026 U.S.–Iran war – Operation Epic Fury, a roughly 39-day air-and-missile campaign that ended in a shaky early-April ceasefire, drew down America's high-end munitions so hard that a post-ceasefire CSIS accounting (April 2026) found the U.S. expended more than half its prewar inventory of four of seven heavily-used munitions: THAAD by roughly 80 percent and Patriot interceptors by 45 to 61 percent. The June 2025 Twelve-Day War had already burned about a quarter of the THAAD stockpile as a first warning.

The prevailing response is diversification rather than simple reshoring. Allied nations are expanding domestic production capacity (notably Germany and Poland), while reserve suppliers such as France, India, and South Korea are increasing their output. Europe has committed up to 800 billion euros for rearmament. The structural trend is moving away from exclusive dependence on the United States as a supplier.

A similar logic is evident in central-bank reserve management. The supply chains for precision weapons depend on rare-earth magnets and specialty metals, many of which are concentrated in China. The drive to establish supplier redundancy parallels record levels of central-bank gold purchases, as an increasing proportion of central banks plan to further diversify reserves away from reliance on a single currency.

This report is a companion to the video "The Munitions Drawdown." While the video presents the overarching narrative, this document provides a more detailed examination of the underlying data and sources.

Depleted U.S. munitions stockpiles, combined with a visible production ceiling and a retreat of American security guarantees, are accelerating a structural diversification of global arms supply away from sole dependence on the United States, with second-order effects that reach into commodity demand and reserve composition.

Conviction level: Medium-High. The evidence for stockpile depletion and for allied capital expenditure commitments is robust and well documented. However, uncertainty remains regarding the magnitude and pace of the shift away from U.S. supply, as realized export data continues to favor the United States.

Time horizon: Several quarters to multiple years. This represents a structural rearmament cycle rather than a short-term tactical opportunity. Notably, order books at the largest European producer already extend through 2034.

Potential invalidation: If U.S. 155mm artillery production reaches and sustains 100,000 rounds per month, and interceptor lead times are significantly reduced, the supply-constraint premise underlying allied diversification would be negated.

For three decades, abundant U.S. munitions production underwrote allied security. Europe could under-invest in its own defense industrial base because the American arsenal was assumed to be deep, fast, and available. Two events in the span of a year inverted that assumption, and a third confirmed the new direction.

The first was Ukraine. From the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 through January 2025, the U.S. shipped more than three million 155mm artillery rounds to Kyiv. That single conflict drew down stockpiles built for a different era of warfare, one that did not anticipate the industrial-scale artillery consumption of a sustained land war in Europe.

The second was the 2026 U.S.–Iran war. The June 2025 Twelve-Day War was the first warning: over twelve days from June 13 to June 25, U.S. forces fired more than 100 THAAD interceptors, with some estimates reaching 150, and early accounting put THAAD use at roughly a quarter of the stockpile. Then came Operation Epic Fury, a far larger U.S.–Iran air-and-missile campaign that ran roughly 39 days from late February 2026 to a shaky early-April ceasefire and struck more than 13,000 targets. A post-ceasefire accounting by CSIS in April 2026 was far worse than the 2025 episode: for four of seven heavily-used munitions the U.S. may have expended more than half its prewar inventory, with THAAD around 80 percent (about 290 of 360) and Patriot interceptors at roughly 45 to 61 percent (between 1,060 and 1,430 of about 2,330), alongside about 850 of 3,100 Tomahawks and roughly 1,000 of 4,400 JASSMs. Each THAAD interceptor costs about $12.7 million. The replenishment math is brutal: THAAD interceptors ordered in 2021 are not slated to enter inventory until April 2027, the current THAAD acquisition adds only 25 to 37 missiles a year, and CSIS estimates rebuilding the seven munitions to prewar levels will take one to four years.

The third was the policy pivot. In May 2026, the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of roughly 5,000 troops from Germany over six to twelve months, as part of a force posture review ordered by the Defense Secretary, leaving more than 30,000 in place but reversing a build-up that began after 2022. The same review halted an in-progress deployment of about 4,000 soldiers to Poland and raised the possibility of further pullbacks from Spain and Italy. The drawdown arrived amid open friction between Washington and European capitals over the 2026 Iran war.

The message to allied governments was clear: U.S. munitions are constrained, and American military presence is simultaneously diminishing. This concurrence transformed a defense-trade narrative into a broader macroeconomic thesis. According to our internal macro classification, the current environment is characterized as a Reflation regime, with both growth and inflation running above trend (94% probability as of May 24, 2026). In this context, large-scale, debt-financed defense expansion contributes to persistent inflationary pressures rather than addressing a demand shortfall.

A deeper structural dimension is also evident. Since World War II, U.S. security guarantees have enabled allied governments to under-invest in defense, reallocating fiscal resources to social programs, while simultaneously supporting global demand for dollar-denominated assets. Countries benefiting from the American security umbrella have had strong incentives to hold dollars and related reserves. As these guarantees recede, two critical questions emerge. First, from a military perspective: can Europe maintain its own defense without U.S. support, and will this effort foster greater European Union autonomy or reveal internal divisions over burden-sharing and command? Second, from a monetary perspective: if security guarantees underpin dollar primacy, does their withdrawal weaken the established link between alliance membership and dollar reserve holdings? While neither issue is fully resolved, both have become central considerations in the wake of recent stockpile depletion events tracked in this report.

The case rests on a measurable gap between what the U.S. can produce and what modern conflict consumes, set against the pace at which allied and reserve suppliers are scaling up.

Exhibit 1: A single 39-day war consumed a generation of high-end inventory. CSIS's April 2026 post-ceasefire accounting of Operation Epic Fury found that of seven heavily-used U.S. munition classes, four had been drawn down by more than half. THAAD interceptors fell about 80 percent (290 of 360); Patriot interceptors 45 to 61 percent (1,060 to 1,430 of 2,330); Tomahawk cruise missiles about 27 percent (~850 of 3,100); JASSM cruise missiles about 23 percent (~1,000 of 4,400). CSIS estimates rebuild times of one to four years across these classes. At current acquisition rates, THAAD alone adds only 25 to 37 interceptors a year. The June 2025 Twelve-Day War, which had already consumed roughly a quarter of THAAD, is the labeled precursor; Epic Fury is the headline event.

Exhibit 2: The U.S. production curve is real but slow. U.S. 155mm output rose from 14,500 rounds a month at the start of the Ukraine war to roughly 40,000 a month by 2025. The Army set a target of 100,000 rounds a month, first for October 2025, a date that has slipped to mid-2026, despite nearly 5 billion dollars invested in new and upgraded plants. The binding constraint is not final assembly; it is upstream, in propellant and explosives feedstock. That distinction matters because it means the bottleneck cannot be solved simply by adding shell-loading lines.

Exhibit 3: A single German producer is scaling fast. Rheinmetall states it has increased artillery ammunition production from 70,000 to 1.1 million rounds a year, and medium-caliber output from about 800,000 to more than 4 million rounds a year, and it plans to produce around 1.5 million artillery shells a year across its network from 2027. The new Unterluss facility in Lower Saxony, opened in August 2025, is designed to produce up to 350,000 shells annually. Rheinmetall's official FY2025 guidance puts 2026 sales at 14.0 to 14.5 billion euros, growth of 40 to 45 percent, and the company does not expect demand to slow before 2034. These output figures are company-sourced; the underlying capex is independently documented.

Exhibit 4: Europe has invested in the build-out. The European Commission's "ReArm Europe" plan, rebranded Readiness 2030 and proposed in March 2025, aims to mobilize up to 800 billion euros for European defense over four years. It combines roughly 650 billion euros of national fiscal flexibility with a 150 billion euro joint loan facility known as SAFE, adopted by the Council in May 2025. Germany separately established a 500-billion-euro infrastructure fund. This is the financing layer that converts intent into orders.

Exhibit 5: Reserve suppliers are scaling and exporting. France is now the world's second-largest arms exporter, having risen after Russia's exports collapsed by 64% over the last decade. India set a record for defense exports in fiscal 2024-25 at about 23,622 crore rupees, or roughly 2.76 billion dollars, up 12% year over year and reaching around 80 countries, with a stated target of roughly 50,000 crore rupees in exports by 2029. Poland is NATO's largest relative defense spender, at about 4.5% of GDP in 2025 by SIPRI and NATO estimates (its adopted budget targeted 4.7%), rising toward 4.8% under the 2026 budget, with the sixth-largest absolute budget in the alliance at about 44.3 billion dollars, after jumping from 2.4% to 4% of GDP between 2022 and 2024.

All preceding analysis is based on primary sources, including SIPRI, the World Gold Council, CSIS, the European Parliament, and official government releases. This section is intentionally distinct to maintain clear separation. The following analysis is derived from proprietary backtests conducted by Benjamin Capital Research on five historical rearmament cycles (the Korean War, Vietnam, the Reagan buildup, post-9/11, and the current Ukraine-driven cycle). These results are based on our internal models rather than third-party data. Where our models challenge or qualify the thesis, we explicitly note this.

Backtest 1, defense-equity outperformance: partially supported. Our model found that defense industrials beat broad industrials in only one of four modern rearmament episodes. The exception is the current Ukraine cycle, where defense outperformed by about 27 percentage points; in the Reagan buildup, defense actually lagged by roughly 49 points. The honest takeaway is that "defense stocks always outperform during a buildup" is weaker than consensus assumes, and today's outperformance looks closer to an outlier than a rule.

Backtest 2, rearmament, and the term premium: supported. In three of five episodes, long-end yields rose during the buildup, and defense spending led the move by roughly eight quarters. This is consistent with the rates call: debt-financed rearmament tends to push the long end up, with a multi-quarter lag.

Backtest 3, defense spending and inflation: supported. Inflation rose in three of five episodes, with the Korean War the cleanest case, peaking at 9.4 percent. The relationship is real but not mechanical, which is why we frame it as a pressure rather than a certainty.

Backtest 4, the Korean War multi-asset parallel: holds for equities and inflation, breaks for gold and FX. Our model confirms the rhyme: during the Korean War mobilization, the S&P rose 39.8 percent, defense names beat the market by about 15 percentage points, and inflation spiked. But it breaks on the channel that matters most today. Gold and the dollar were fixed under Bretton Woods in the 1950s, so there was no reserve-diversification channel at all. That channel is wide open in 2026, which is the single biggest reason the Korean War parallel is incomplete rather than clean.

A key caveat emerges from the historical record, illustrating why the current environment may differ. The Reagan-era buildup is the sole episode that contradicts all observed channels, primarily because Volcker's disinflation policies coincided with the defense expansion, overpowering the fiscal stimulus. During this period, yields declined by approximately 546 basis points and inflation fell by 9.2 points, despite significant defense spending. Our backtests indicate that the thesis holds when monetary policy does not counteract fiscal expansion, but is undermined when the central bank is aggressively targeting inflation. This dynamic underscores the importance of current Federal Reserve policy alongside the rearmament cycle.

The thesis unfolds as a transmission chain, where each stage triggers the next.

Stage 1: Two wars draw down stockpiles faster than production refills them. Ukraine consumed more than three million artillery rounds; the 2026 U.S.–Iran war consumed more than half of several high-end munitions stockpiles (CSIS), after the June 2025 Twelve-Day War had already taken roughly a quarter of THAAD. With 155mm output at 40,000 a month and interceptor deliveries years out, the drawdown outpaces the refill.

Stage 2: The constraint becomes public knowledge. Production targets slip on the record, interceptor lead times stretch to 2027, and allied governments read the same headlines. The depletion ceases to be a classified concern and becomes a planning assumption in European and Asian capitals.

Stage 3: Allies move from buying American to building and diversifying. The May 2026 troop drawdown and the stalled Poland deployment signal a reduced presence and a weaker backstop. The rational response is redundancy: domestic capacity (Germany's Unterluss, Poland's spending surge) plus multiple foreign suppliers (France, South Korea, India) rather than a single one.

Stage 4: Capital floods the allied defense industrial base. The 800 billion euro Readiness 2030 envelope and Germany's 500 billion euro fund convert the strategic shift into multi-year order books. Rheinmetall's guidance to 2034 is the visible evidence that orders are being placed, not just discussed.

Stage 5: Diversification now encompasses both weapons systems and their critical inputs, as well as the associated payment mechanisms. Precision munitions require significant quantities of rare-earth magnets and specialty metals; many advanced systems, particularly rockets, depend on rare-earth permanent magnets for guidance and actuation. Defense firms are actively lobbying to postpone a forthcoming ban on China-sourced samarium-cobalt and neodymium magnets, as well as tungsten and tantalum, based on 2018 legislative restrictions. Achieving supply security for both finished weapons and their inputs may necessitate trade relationships with countries subject to sanctions or near-sanction status, which cannot be managed solely through dollar-based payment systems. Consequently, redundancy in suppliers drives a parallel push for redundancy in settlement mechanisms, including non-dollar payment channels and a more diversified reserve composition, with gold serving as a neutral asset. This final stage is analytically the weakest: the link between concentrated defense-input supply and reserve diversification is inferential, and gold demand is influenced by multiple factors beyond defense logistics, such as real interest rates and broader trends in reserve management. We identify this as inference rather than empirical fact, though the logic is consistent and recent record gold purchases align with this perspective.

The closest analog is the Korean War mobilization of 1950 to 1953. When the war began, the U.S. discovered that its post-World War II demobilized industrial base could not produce munitions fast enough, and Congress passed the Defense Production Act in 1950 to force an emergency expansion. The parallel to 2026 is direct: a sudden recognition that "arsenal of democracy" capacity had atrophied during a period of assumed security, followed by a scramble to rebuild.

Three critical differences separate 1950 from today:

We did not leave this rhyme as an assertion. Our own multi-asset backtest of the Korean War (see What Our Own Backtests Show, above) quantifies exactly where it holds and where it breaks: it holds for equities and inflation, but it breaks for gold and the dollar, because Bretton Woods fixed them in the 1950s and there was no reserve-diversification channel. That channel is the live one today, which is why the parallel is a useful frame rather than a template.

All observations in this section are based on historical patterns and are intended for educational purposes; they do not constitute investment advice.

Equities. The consensus view is that defense industrial names with multi-year order visibility outperform broad industrials during a buildup, with consumables (ammunition, interceptors, drones) re-rating faster than platform primes because they re-order on a faster cycle than aircraft or ships. Our own backtest complicates the easy version of that: defense outperformed broad industrials in only one of four modern rearmament episodes (the current Ukraine cycle, by about 27 points), and lagged badly in the Reagan buildup, so the edge is regime-dependent rather than automatic (see What Our Own Backtests Show, above). The pattern in this cycle favors the European and allied producers benefiting from the 800 billion euro envelope, while U.S. primes still participate in the absolute spending surge, even as their relative export share is contested. Rheinmetall's guide to 14.0 to 14.5 billion euros in 2026 sales and Lockheed Martin's 9 billion-dollar multi-site capital plan running through 2030 illustrate where order-driven revenue visibility is concentrating.

Rates and fixed income. When governments finance large defense build-outs with debt, the historical pattern is increased net issuance and upward pressure on the term premium. The EU's 800 billion euro envelope, Germany's 500 billion euro fund, and Poland's move toward 4.8% of GDP all represent new supply. In a Reflation regime, that issuance lands on a market already repricing sticky inflation, and our internal data shows the 10-year term premium at an extreme reading. The historical pattern suggests a steepening bias in such conditions.

Credit. Established investment-grade defense issuers have historically seen spread support when backlog visibility lowers idiosyncratic default risk. The flip side: smaller suppliers scaling capacity quickly carry execution and leverage risk, a pattern that typically widens the quality gap within the sector rather than compressing it.

FX and emerging markets. Defense exports are a source of foreign-exchange earnings and tend to deepen bilateral trade relationships, sometimes in non-dollar currencies. Supplier-diversifying economies with credible industrial bases, including India and South Korea, have historically gained both export revenue and geopolitical leverage in such cycles. The euro, meanwhile, gains a structural-autonomy narrative even as near-term issuance weighs on it.

Commodities. In environments of defense-input scarcity, specialty metals tied to munitions (rare-earth magnets, tungsten, antimony, explosives feedstocks) have historically seen structural demand intensity. Gold has historically behaved as the reserve-diversification hedge that accompanies supply-diversification impulses, and central-bank buying is in a multi-year, record-level run: 863 tonnes in 2025 on top of a record 1,045 tonnes in 2024, with every year since 2022 landing far above the 473-tonne annual average of 2010 to 2021. The forward signal is the real story, and it is strengthening: in the World Gold Council's 2025 survey, a record 43 percent of central banks said they plan to add to their own gold, up from 29 percent in 2024, and 95 percent expect official reserves to keep rising, the highest reading in the survey's history. Poland, one of the largest relative defense spenders, was the single largest buyer for the second year running at 102 tonnes.

Four counter-arguments deserve a fair hearing.

Counter-argument 1: U.S. production catches up, and the urgency evaporates. A proponent would point out that the Army has committed nearly 5 billion dollars, that Lockheed Martin is executing a 9 billion dollar plan to upgrade more than 20 domestic sites through 2030, quadrupling precision-missile capacity, and that production has already nearly tripled from 14,500 to 40,000 rounds a month. If the 100,000 target is hit and interceptor lines accelerate, the supply-constraint premise weakens materially. The evidence for this view is the demonstrated funding and the real production ramp. The thesis still holds on balance because the Army has moved the target date twice, and the upstream propellant bottleneck is structural, not a matter of appropriations alone. The April 2026 CSIS accounting, which found that more than half of several munition types were expended during the roughly 39-day 2026 U.S.–Iran war, widens rather than narrows the gap that production must close. Base rates for large defense-industrial programs meeting revised timelines are moderate, and weighing demonstrated slippage against demonstrated funding lands the estimate near the middle.

Estimated probability counter-argument is correct: 35%

Counter-argument 2: The allied capacity claims are overstated. A proponent would note that Rheinmetall's headline output figures are company-sourced and not independently audited, that nameplate capacity is not realized output, and that European producers face their own propellant and energy-cost constraints. This is a serious objection. Corporate capacity announcements have historically overstated near-term deliverable output by a meaningful margin. The thesis survives because the trend, not the single headline, carries the argument: the independently documented capex (Unterluss, the 800 billion euro envelope, Poland's verified spending jump) establishes the direction even if the precise output claim is discounted.

Estimated probability counter-argument is correct: 30%

Counter-argument 3: U.S. export dominance proves stickier than the narrative. A proponent would cite the SIPRI data directly: the U.S. share of global arms exports rose from 35% to 43% over the last decade, U.S. exports grew 21%, and SIPRI projects the U.S. as the top supplier for the foreseeable future. F-35 ecosystems, interoperability requirements, and training pipelines lock allies in regardless of stockpile stress. This is the strongest counterargument because it rests on actual data, not projections. The thesis remains a leading indicator call: it argues the direction of travel has changed even though the delivered-volume share has not yet confirmed it. That is precisely where the thesis can be wrong on timing.

Estimated probability counter-argument is correct: 40%

Counter-argument 4: a hawkish Fed could swamp the fiscal impulse. This one comes straight out of our own backtests rather than the news flow. The fiscal-to-yields and fiscal-to-inflation channels held in three of five historical episodes, but they were overwhelmed in the Reagan buildup, when Volcker's disinflation drove long-end yields down roughly 546 basis points and inflation down 9.2 points despite a massive defense ramp. If the Fed decides to prioritize crushing the current supply-driven inflation over everything else, the term premium and inflation legs of this thesis weaken materially, even with rearmament running at full speed. The reason we still weigh the thesis is that today's inflation is supply-driven, and the Fed has signaled it is reluctant to fight aggressively. But a regime where the central bank fights anyway is the cleanest way this thesis underperforms.

Estimated probability counter-argument is correct: 30%

Three indicators carry this thesis quarter to quarter. Watch monthly: U.S. 155mm output reports, if they stay below 100,000 rounds past mid-2026 while EU disbursement scales, the thesis accelerates. Watch quarterly: Lockheed Martin and RTX backlog updates, alongside THAAD and Patriot interceptor delivery schedules. A material pull-forward of either is the first hard sign that the production gap is closing. Watch annually: SIPRI's export-share data and the World Gold Council's central-bank survey. A U.S. share that keeps climbing while WGC buying intent rolls over is the cleanest read that the realized data is winning over the leading signal.

A key asymmetric risk is a third delay in achieving the 100,000-round monthly production target. Should this milestone be postponed again, the leading-indicator thesis would become widely accepted, multi-year European order backlogs would solidify as consensus, and investment opportunities that were speculative in 2025 could become crowded by 2027. The optimal window to act on a gradual structural shift is before it becomes universally recognized.

The underlying trend does not indicate a U.S. withdrawal from arms-supply leadership. The United States remains the largest arms exporter globally and is expected to retain this position over the SIPRI five-year horizon. Rather, the shift marks the end of the assumption that a single nation can serve as the world's arsenal. The evolving arms-trade landscape will feature more suppliers, extended order books, and, for the first time in two generations, substantial non-U.S. capacity accessible to allied governments without requiring U.S. approval. The trend toward reserve diversification mirrors this logic: global actors are simultaneously building redundancy across suppliers and payment systems, reflecting the recent realization that reliance on single points of supply poses a significant risk.

UK Defence Journal and Newsweek, "Germany Overtakes US in Ammunition Production Capacity," citing Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger, 2025.

Rheinmetall, "A new era at Rheinmetall: Ammunition factory opening in Unterluss," company release, September 2025.

Defense One, "Army expects to make more than a million artillery shells next year," June 2025; National Defense Magazine, "Army Falls Short of 155mm Production Goal," August 2025; Breaking Defense, "Army hitting stride with 155mm production," October 2025.

CNN, "US used about 25% of its THAAD missile interceptors during Israel-Iran war," July 2025; Stars and Stripes, "US used 14% of its THAAD stockpile against Iran," July 2025; Breaking Defense, "No THAADs til 2027," December 2025.

Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Last Rounds? Status of Key Munitions at the Iran War Ceasefire," April 2026 (post-ceasefire accounting of the 2026 U.S.–Iran war / Operation Epic Fury, a ~39-day campaign: more than half of prewar inventory expended for four of seven heavily-used munitions; THAAD ~80 percent (290 of 360); Patriot roughly 45 to 61 percent; one-to-four-year rebuild).

Munich Security Conference, Munich Security Report 2026 ("Under Destruction"), Europe chapter, February 2026.

International Institute for Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2026 (February 2026): Europe accounted for over 21 percent of global defence spending in 2025, up from 17 percent in 2022; and "Progress and Shortfalls in Europe's Defence: An Assessment," Strategic Dossier, 2025.

European Commission and European Parliament, "ReArm Europe Plan / Readiness 2030," documentation on the 800 billion euro envelope and the SAFE 150 billion euro facility, March to May 2025.

SIPRI, "Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2024," fact sheet, March 2025.

Government of India, Press Information Bureau, "Defence exports surge to record Rs 23,622 crore in FY 2024-25," April 2025.

The Defense Post and Notes From Poland, reporting on Poland's defense spending (~4.5% of GDP realized, 4.7% budgeted) and NATO ranking, 2025; SIPRI Trends in World Military Expenditure 2025.

World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2025 (29 January 2026): central banks bought 863 tonnes in 2025, down from 1,045 tonnes in 2024 but still well above the 473-tonne 2010-2021 average; a record 43 percent of surveyed central banks plan to add gold (up from 29 percent in 2024).

PBS NewsHour, NPR, and CNN, reporting on the May 2026 withdrawal of approximately 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany and the halted Poland deployment, May 2026.

Financial Times reporting via wire services on defense-industry lobbying over the China rare-earth magnet ban, and the 2018 legislative provisions on magnets, tungsten, and tantalum, May 2026.

Lockheed Martin company announcements on the Troy, Alabama munitions facility and the 9 billion dollar multi-site capital plan, May 2026.

Benjamin Capital Research internal macro briefing, May 24, 2026, for the Reflation regime classification, term-premium reading, and dollar-positioning data.

Methodology note: artillery output comparisons annualize the reported U.S. monthly 155mm figure for like-for-like comparison against the European annual figures. The U.S. global export-share figures use SIPRI's standard five-year-window methodology (2015-19 versus 2020-24) rather than single-year data, consistent with SIPRI reporting conventions.

Backtest methodology note: the "What Our Own Backtests Show" section is built entirely from in-house Benjamin Capital Research models, not third-party research. Each model tests one thesis claim against five historical rearmament cycles (Korean War, Vietnam, Reagan buildup, post-9/11, and the current Ukraine cycle) using public market and macro series. These are clearly distinct from the primary-source figures elsewhere in this report, and any time our own model output appears it is labeled as such.

This report is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. All asset class commentary reflects historical patterns and educational analysis, not personal investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Readers should consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.

Benjamin Capital Research | May 30, 2026