Pentagon 'preparing for something much bigger' after string of military conflicts: analyst

Ewan Gleadow
April 16, 2026 
RAW STORY


Members of the media raise hands to ask questions, as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump's administration may be preparing for further conflicts after the Pentagon received a briefing to boost weapons production, a political analyst has warned.

Pentagon officials were privately briefed by the Trump administration last month, according to Heather Delaney Reese. Further investigation from the Wall Street Journal found that admin heads had also approached US manufacturers about playing a larger role in weapons production.

The WSJ found that, "The Pentagon is interested in enlisting the companies to use their personnel and factory capacity to increase production of munitions and other equipment as the wars in Ukraine and Iran deplete stocks. Discussions started before the war in Iran, the people said."

This lines up with Reese's claim that the Trump admin has a much bigger plan that could potentially begin once the Iran war is deemed to be over. Reese wrote in her Substack, "By late March, the Pentagon had signed framework agreements with defense contractors to put the military on what it called a 'wartime footing.'

"And now it isn’t just pressuring defense contractors. It’s reaching beyond the defense industry entirely, asking the companies that build our cars to start building our bombs. That is not what a country does when a war is almost over. That is what a country does when it is preparing for something much bigger.

"The United States is deploying more than 10,000 additional troops to the Middle East before the end of April. Roughly 6,000 aboard the USS George H.W. Bush carrier group, and another 4,200 from the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

"These reinforcements will join the approximately 50,000 U.S. personnel already operating in the region, bringing the total to roughly 60,000 American service members and giving U.S. Central Command three aircraft carriers in theater."

Reese went on to suggest that Trump is contemplating further conflicts to continue his image as a wartime president.

"Maybe he is manufacturing a global conflict so he can play wartime president, surround himself with generals, and demand the kind of loyalty and worship that only crisis can produce, like he saw in those old movies," Reese wrote. "Maybe he saw what war did for other leaders’ approval ratings and thought he could replicate it, only to find that it doesn’t work when you start the war yourself and the whole world knows it.

"Or maybe this was always the plan. The Heritage Foundation. The Project 2025 architects. The defense contractors who stood behind him at the White House. They didn’t build this infrastructure for a man who wanted peace. They built it for expansion. And Trump didn’t just go along with it. He reveled in it."