King Charles III addressed a joint session of Congress — only the second British monarch to do so — and the speech, rubber-stamped by the U.K. government but largely penned by the King himself, is a rare document of strategic intent rather than diplomatic boilerplate.
Three commitments worth listening to
(1) Biggest sustained increase in U.K. defense spending since the Cold War. Charles tied the renewal explicitly to the threat environment: "the threats we face demand a transformation in British defense."
(2) F-35 joint production. "We are building F-35s together" — a Lockheed Martin program that anchors transatlantic defense industrial base and is a multi-decade revenue stream.
(3) AUKUS: "the most ambitious submarine program in history." This is the General Dynamics Electric Boat / BAE Systems / Australia capacity build that General Dynamics will reaffirm in tomorrow's earnings.
The speech also restated NATO Article 5 commitment, paid respects to 9/11 victims and called the U.S./U.K. relationship "indispensable." This was a sovereign signaling that the British monarchy is willing to spend royal capital lobbying a Trump administration that has questioned NATO unity.
Defense is now a 5-to-7 year backlog story
The King's speech, paired with the John Lehman / Anand Toprani op-ed ("Reagan's Military Lessons for the New Cold War") on the same page, is the cleanest signal yet that the defense buildup isn't a 2026 budget headline — it's a multi-decade rearmament cycle in the West. We are holding Defense at 18%, REINFORCING LMT (F-35), GD (AUKUS sub program), RTX (Patriot/Tomahawk), NOC (B-21/Sentinel), AVAV + KTOS (low-cost-mass), and ADDING AME (Ametek) at 1.5% on the $5B Indicor acquisition that broadens our aerospace/defense industrials exposure.
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