WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp ( LMT )

and RTX Corp ( RTX ), fresh off a surge of orders in

response to Russian aggression against Ukraine and the war in

Gaza, stand to profit from $95 billion of mostly new weapons

funding as the increasingly drawn out conflicts renew demand for

pricey equipment.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed a hard-fought bill

into law that provides billions of dollars of new U.S. aid to

Ukraine for its war with Russia, including $61 billion for

Ukraine and $26 billion for Israel.

"There are now factories breaking ground around the

country," because of the new funding and several recent

"supplemental" funding rounds, said the Pentagon's acquisitions

chief Bill LaPlante on Wednesday.

Combat in Ukraine and Israel have consumed high volumes of

munitions, including Patriot air defense interceptors, used to

shoot down Russian missiles, and vast quantities of 155

millimeter artillery rounds.

The new funds will pay for new shipments and be used to

replenish U.S. stock piles. European allies have also been

lining up to buy U.S. weaponry due to the war in Ukraine and a

desire to strengthen NATO.

The United States needs to buy and restock "Tomahawk,

AMRAAM, Coyote, SM-6," RTX's CFO Neil Mitchill told Reuters in

an interview, listing a long-range cruise missile, an air-to-air

missile, a small drone and a ground based missile that can be

used for air defense. In most cases, the U.S. has either sent

the munitions to Ukraine or used them to defend Red Sea shipping

lanes.

Lockheed's CEO Jim Taiclet told investors on Tuesday that he

expects that the fiscal 2025 "presidential budget requests and

additive supplemental funding will provide a strong underpinning

for future growth over the next several years for our company."

However, given uncertainty about when the funding will flow

to defense firms, neither Lockheed nor RTX, formerly named

Raytheon Technologies, raised their sales forecasts for 2024.

"I don't expect the flash to sales to be quicker," RTX's

Mitchill said, adding he thought contracting might "a little bit

faster" this time. Defense contracting is a slow and legally

complex process.

"The bottom line is that, you know, we've got a lot of

orders. There's $77 billion of defense in our backlog. So it'll

take some time to, to meet those deliveries," Mitchill said.

RTX makes the Patriot, which stands for Phased Array

Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target, surface-to-air missile

defense system.

Lockheed makes the newest version of the interceptors that

arm the Patriot, known as PAC-3 MSE, which cost about $4 million

each, according to Army budget documents.

In January European nations banded together to buy up to

1,000 Patriot interceptors. European production for that order,

a Patriot interceptor variant called Guidance Enhanced Missiles,

or GEM-T, would likely be completed by COMLOG, a joint venture

between RTX and MBDA, where current production capacity is

limited.

But Patriot is only one of the systems where investment is

needed to expand production capacity before greater revenues

will flow.

In the $95 billion supplemental there is more than $17

billion earmarked for investment to expand production capacity

for the U.S. defense industrial base including 155 millimeter

shell production and $3.3 billion for shipyards.