The Real Munitions Shortage Transcends the Iran War
The American Conservative · R · trust 51/100
Americans have a right to know whether their government is wasting the military power they pay for.
Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... Frustrated by the lack of progress in his war with Iran, President Donald Trump is stuck in a cycle of threatened retaliation and retreat. Officially, Trump’s restraint is intended to give ongoing diplomatic talks space . Unofficially, however, Trump’s hesitancy to go all-in has a more troubling cause: warnings from the Pentagon about the sufficiency of U.S. missile stockpiles.
Reporting on such concerns, expressed to the president by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, has fed two widely disseminated narratives: First, that the United States has a “shortage” of the missiles necessary to continue fighting in the Middle East. Second, that this information was inappropriately leaked to the public and has compromised the U.S. bargaining position.
Neither storyline is accurate, but understanding why they misstate the reality is vital to any conversation about the costs of the war in Iran for the United States.
Let’s start with the idea that the United States has too few missiles to continue the war with Iran. This is certainly false.
Operation Epic Fury and the weeks of on-and-off strikes that followed did expend a massive number of weapons, including high-end precision missiles, ballistic missile interceptors, and a range of other cheaper offensive and defensive munitions. But stockpile constraints are not an issue for many, or even most, of the missiles in the U.S. arsenal.
For instance, the United States has tens of thousands of JDAMs and other “stand-in” munitions that can be dropped right over the target. These are inexpensive and relatively easy to manufacture. With Iranian air defenses degraded, CENTCOM could keep up its offensive operations for months or even years relying mostly on these weapons, though such a campaign would have diminishing returns and would not be risk free.
There are more legitimate reasons to be concerned about the sufficiency of U.S. supplies of more sophisticated and longer-range munitions, including those needed to strike hard-to-reach and well-defended targets, and anti-ballistic missile interceptors, used to defend U.S. bases and assets. But even here, coverage is often misleading.
On the offensive side, there are worries about supplies of Tomahawk cruise missiles and the ground-launched PRSM, which the U.S. Army just started acquiring. The war has certainly depleted U.S. stores of these weapons. Because the PRSM is a new weapon , Operation Epic Fury likely burned through most if not all of what the United States had available. The campaign has also absorbed about a third of Tomahawk missiles so far, along with smaller quantities of other precision missiles like the JASSM and ATACMS.
These numbers are substantial, especially given the short duration of the war. What has been expended will take several years at least to be replenished, but U.S. supplies are far from exhaustion. Even using only these higher-end munitions, the United States could continue striking Iran for some time if it chose to do so, and would probably run out of valuable targets before running out of missiles.
On the defensive side, the situation is more worrisome, especially when it comes to ballistic missile interceptors. Here, estimates suggest the United States has burned through 60 percent of prewar stockpiles, which were already depleted due to the 12-Day War last June and the large amounts of military aid given to Ukraine.
Still, with 800 or so Patriot missiles and 250 THAAD missiles , the United States could feasibly continue fighting for an extended period without accepting undue risk to U.S. forces in the region. This is especially true because Iran’s rate of ballistic missile launches has dropped substantially since the beginning of the war and could fall even further if the United States were to resume its strikes on Iran’s military infrastructure. These supplies could also be extended by prioritizing targets such as critical assets or bases with large numbers of personnel.
The bottom line: While we should not exaggerate the strength of the U.S. military, we also should not overstate its weakness. The United States could keep fighting in the Middle East. It has the firepower to do so. But this doesn’t mean that it should or that the war has been consequence-free for U.S. national security.
The actual munitions challenge facing the United States today is not about the Middle East or Iran. These are the proximate driver of pressure on U.S. stockpiles, but not its root cause. The real problem is that the United States has for years failed to prioritize its many military commitments or grapple with the reality of growing constraints on U.S. military power, believing that it could be everywhere and do everything without facing tradeoffs. Now, the bill for that gluttonous approach to foreign policy is coming due.
Over the past six months, the Trump administration has chosen to invest a significant percentage of American military power, in the form of munitions and other assets, into a conflict in the Middle East in which no core American interests were at stake. In doing so, it has put at risk or even fatally compromised its ability to respond to challenges that might threaten those interests in a serious way in the future.
It now seems almost silly, for example, to plan for a U.S. war with China over Taiwan or any other flashpoint in the near or medium term. China currently has over 3,000 ballistic missiles, more than four times the number of Patriot interceptors the United States has remaining. Moreover, in a war against China, the U.S. military would not be able to depend on JDAMs and similar munitions because China’s air defenses and missile capabilities are likely overwhelming. If the United States used up a third of its high-end precision munitions against Iran in a few weeks of war,…
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