CNN has reported that the US military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during the war with Iran, and according to experts, this reduction is so severe that it has created a near-term risk of the US running out of ammunition should a future conflict arise in the next few years.
According to this new study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the findings were confirmed by three sources familiar with recent Pentagon assessments of U.S. stockpiles.
The US is running dangerously low on some key munitions needed to confront a near-adversary in the short term, such as China.
So, while the US does still have sufficient munitions to continue bombing Iran, for example, if the shaky cease-fire were to fall apart, if they were to need to confront an adversary like China or like Russia, for example, then that could pose significant problems for the United States.
Now, to give you an example of how much the U.S. stockpile has been depleted over the last seven-plus weeks of war on Iran, according to this assessment. The sources that we spoke to, the US military has expended at least 45% of its stockpile of precision strike missiles, at least half of its inventory of fired missiles, which are designed to intercept ballistic missiles, and nearly 50% of its stockpile of Patriot air defence interceptor missiles, which are, of course, very key air defence munitions.
Now, the US military has also expended approximately 30% of its Tomahawk missile stockpile, which is that long-range munition that is really key to attacking targets further away.
More than 20% of its stockpile of long-range joint air-to-surface standoff missiles and approximately 20% of its SM-3 and SM-6 missiles. Now, this is important because these munitions take a while to be replaced. According to our sources, this analysis indicates it would take between 1 and 6 years to replace many of these munitions.
And so this is a really big problem that we should note that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Kaine, he actually warned about as the administration was preparing to go to war with Iran, potentially, he was raising concerns. He was told about this issue of depleted stockpiles around the world, particularly those that could be very useful to U.S. allies like Israel and Ukraine.
The Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for a supplemental to fund efforts to replace these munitions, but it could still take quite some time before they are back in U.S. stockpiles.
Retired Army Major Harrison Mann, a former Defence Intelligence Agency official and the associate campaigns director for Win Without War, said that the US may be running out of ammo in its fight against Iran. Part of this is a math problem that we knew the answer to before this war started.
We knew what our stockpiles were. And I used to work with the folks at the Defence Intelligence Agency who used to do their best to count how many missiles and drones Iran had. And so, like, there’s really two things that I want to draw out of here, retired Army Major Harrison Mann said.
We’ve run out of up to 50% of our strategic defensive interceptors within a month of a war with a regional power, according to retired Army Major Harrison Mann.
“The other thing I want to pull out of this, I think, you know, you could be watching, this report about us running out of all these critical munitions and say, well, wait a minute. Don’t we have the most powerful military in the world? Don’t we have the biggest military in the world? We just spent nearly $1 trillion on the Pentagon last year,” according to retired Army Major Harrison Mann.
Major Mann elaborates further, why don’t the U.S. have enough ammo? And I think it’s important for folks to understand, especially as we move into talking about supplemental funding or a new defence funding bill. These hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress gives the president for war largely do not go toward what we would say we need for war.
“The reason that we don’t have enough air defence interceptors is that instead, we’ve been spending that money on, like, these big projects that are designed to be expensive.”
Major Mann goes on to elaborate further, “Like, I hate to describe it this way, but a lot of this, this $900 billion budget, and that’s what Congress passed last year, nearly every Republican and over over 50% of Democrats, becomes a slush fund for defence contractors. Raytheon. Lockheed.”
And instead of producing the defensive capabilities that you say we might need. Instead of doing things like paying to get black mould out of the soldiers’ barracks, instead of going towards getting better bomb shelters for the hundreds of U.S. troops who have been wounded in this war.
More money is not the answer. There’s also an aspect to this: more judicious spending, specifically, when it comes to Iran.
How does the U.S. make that more efficient? Does it need to adjust toward a more Ukrainian-like model? So this is another reflection of our misguided priorities.
Drone proliferation in the Middle East has been a threat for at least a decade. We saw them popping up in the Syrian civil war, and Iran has been a leader in this field, as you mentioned. Ukrainians, out of necessity, figured out much, much cheaper ways to deal with this threat.
China will supply Iran with arms for free.
Last week’s letters exchanged between him and President Xi of China, in which Xi effectively promised Trump that China would not be supplying ammunition to Tehran.
Do you think a shipment of arms from China could have been sent to Iran without Xi knowing and without Beijing being aware of what was being transported? We also have to note that the accusation here is a dual-use system.
A lot of Iran’s missiles and drones depend on electronic circuit board stuff that they can’t manufacture domestically.
The CIA supplied billions of dollars in weapons to the Afghan mujahideen during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan War via Operation Cyclone, a major covert program, alongside Pakistan’s ISI. This effort provided over 400,000 Kalashnikov rifles, anti-aircraft weaponry, and ammunition to combat Soviet forces, ultimately strengthening the Afghan resistance.
The U.S. provided over a billion in funding and military equipment to support the Afghan rebels, making it one of the longest and most expensive covert operations.
This could have been something routine, or it could have been China testing the waters and trying to keep the Iranian war effort going. It’s hard to be sure right now.
Recently, China delivered more than 1200 FN-6 MANPADs and thousands of HJ-12E anti-tank missiles to China. This could mean China could supply arms to Iran for free to deplete the U.S. weapons stockpiles. What the CIA did in the Afghan war in the 1980s against the Soviet Union, and China is doing the same, covert weapons shipments to Iran.
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