What do Iranian drones have in common with Russian hypersonic missiles and China's DF-21D "aircraft carrier killer" rocket? All three pose a clear and present danger to U.S. forces and their allies, and all three require air defense missiles to protect against this threat.

That's a problem for the U.S. and allied militaries, though, and for defense companies like Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and RTX Corporation, makers of the famous PATRIOT air defense missile (as well as many other missiles, such as the just as famous HIMARS rocket in use today in Ukraine).

Defense products, you see, involve long supply chains -- similar to what one sees in the automotive industry -- where one company may produce a final product (like a PATRIOT) but depends on subcontractors to produce the components that go into that final product. You probably recall how shortages of low-tech automotive semiconductor chips resulted in widespread shortages of cars during the pandemic, for example. Well, today, slow shortages of rocket engines pose a bottleneck to the production of rockets by America's defense companies, too.

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Source Fool.com