Hey listeners, it's July 27th. I'm Marcus Weiskeber, National Security Reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

And this is what's news and earnings. Our look at some of the biggest themes standing out this earnings season.

As the war in Iran nears the start of its sixth month, the manufacturing capacity of U.S. defense companies is in the spotlight.

The Pentagon's top leaders have pressed companies like Lockheed Martin and RTX to expand their

production lines, especially for munitions. They've promised lucrative multi-year deals,

but Congress still needs to prove a lot of the funding. The money is still coming through,

though. Locky just reported a record $230 billion order backlog.

To break this all down for us today, we're joined by Wall Street Journal Aerospace

and Defense reporter Drew Fitzgerald.

Drew, three of the top six defense companies, Lockheed, RTF, and Northrop Grumman have already

reported. Shares of Lockheed, Martin, and RTX are surging after both companies report its swelling

order books driven by strong demand for military hardware. What's the sentiment among these

companies right now? Well, the mood among

these defense company executives is positive right now. As you mentioned, Lockheed has a record

$230 billion order backlog. That's up nearly $40 billion this year, largely thanks to a roughly

$35 billion deal for Thad interceptors.

That's a very high-end powerful missile interceptor that's been used a lot in the Middle East lately

and is very backlogged all around the world.

Backlog is soaring, and that doesn't even account for some of these framework agreements that the

Pentagon has issued these companies, which are kind of like IOUs. They're not backed by

congressional funding, and congressional funding is a big question for them, whether that will come

through. So that's a possible storm cloud on the horizon, but investors aren't really concerned

...