The U.S. military’s aircraft losses in the Iran war have risen significantly since May, with the price tag to replace all of the damaged aircraft now topping $5.1 billion, according to a Congressional Research Service report circulated this week.

Losses of uncrewed drones, fighter jets and one MH-60 Seahawk anti-submarine helicopter add to the growing cost of the war. A total of 81 military aircraft have been destroyed or damaged since the war began Feb. 28. A September report by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that each month the conflict drags on will increase the cost to American taxpayers by as much as $3 billion.

Destroyed or damaged MQ-9 Reaper drones, the backbone of U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East, account for a big chunk of the losses. Threat Status broke the story in June that the U.S. Air Force had lost at least 45 Reaper drones in the Middle East since 2017 with no capability to replace them. That number continues to grow, according to the CRS report.

Matt Johnson, the vice president and general manager of Martin-Baker America, sat down with Threat Status podcast host and National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang for an exclusive interview to talk about the equipment saving the lives of U.S. servicemen and women.

“You can look some person in the eye and see that the work you’ve done has really brought them home to their families,” Mr. Johnson said. He said his workforce is driven by the mission, adding that their experiences when a pilot who has used their ejection seats visits the manufacturing facility to say “thank you” are a massive motivator.

The parachutes for each seat are hand-packed, requiring a dedicated worker to ensure that a chute attached to the seat for months or even years deploys properly when it’s needed in those survival situations. “They all talk about how meaningful it was, you know, the day that their mom or their dad came home after that experience. Without Martin-Baker, it wouldn’t be possible,” Mr. Johnson said.

California-based Anduril Industries is quickly outstripping its “startup” label as President Trump announced Tuesday that the defense company will be building a new two-million-square-foot submarine facility at Sparrows Point Shipyard near the Port of Baltimore.

The new facility is named Arsenal-2 and is being modeled on Anduril’s Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio, where the company is producing the Fury Combat Collaborative Aircraft. The new shipyard will work in conjunction with both the Huntington Ingalls Newport News facility on the Virginia coast and the General Dynamics Electric Boat facility in Groton, Connecticut. Anduril is slated to spend $3.7 billion on building the new yard, with an additional $2.9 billion in funding coming from the Navy.

“The storied grounds of Sparrows Point will never fall silent again,” Mr. Trump said during the announcement. “Since World War II, there’s been nothing like what we’re doing today.” Arsenal-2 will build components for Virginia-class attack submarines. That includes torpedo tubes, sterns and bow sections. The final assembly will be handled by its neighboring shipbuilders.

Chinese company Huawei Technologies is buried deep into the infrastructure of the global internet, offering China control of what one former U.S. intelligence leader called an “existential” threat to U.S. national security.

Retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, former director of the National Security Agency, says Huawei controls roughly 50% of the telecommunications infrastructure used around the world today, a share that is only projected to grow. “If you control the global telecommunications infrastructure, you control the world, right?” Adm. McConnell told National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz for his weekly “Inside the Ring” column.

Adm. McConnell, also director of national intelligence from 2007 to 2009, said the U.S. has been negligent in allowing China to dominate global telecommunications networks. Beijing’s expanded role in global communications via its Digital Silk Road program is deliberately undercutting competitors in the market for geopolitical gains, according to Adm. McConnell. “Imagine if that network is manipulable,” he said. “We are incredibly vulnerable.”

Defending the supply chain for critical metals is an urgent requirement, according to retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times that “China accounts for roughly 60% of global aluminum production.”

The situation “creates immense vulnerability” for Washington, given the prospect of a U.S.-China military clash over the island democracy of Taiwan, according to Mr. Flynn. “Because Canada does not produce high-purity aluminum, the U.S. must now rely on supplies from the Persian Gulf,” he writes. “This extended supply chain poses a clear and present danger to U.S. national security.

“The United States must retain the industrial capacity to produce the materials its military depends on. America cannot afford to discover the limits of its primary-metal supply chain after a conflict has already begun,” Mr. Flynn writes. “If putting America first and keeping our nation safe is our goal, then investing in America and rebuilding our high-purity primary aluminum production capacity will truly make our country great.”

• Oct. 12-14 — AUSA Annual Meeting and Expo, Association of the U.S. Army

• Oct. 14 — The Future of the U.S. AI “Stack” in the Middle East, Middle East Institute

• Oct. 15 — The Rise and Fall of the U.S.-Pakistan Relationship After 9/11, Stimson Center

• Oct. 21 — A Discussion with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Andrew Puzder, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 27 — Chemistry of Combat: Rebuilding America’s Energetics Base, Hudson Institute

• Nov. 20-22 — Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, HFX