{"id":207970,"date":"2026-04-24T02:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/207970\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T02:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:04:10","slug":"iran-war-has-drained-u-s-supplies-of-critical-costly-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/207970\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran War Has Drained U.S. Supplies of Critical, Costly Weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the Iran war began in late February, the United States has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China, close to the total number remaining in the U.S. stockpile. The military has fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles<\/a>, roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles<\/a> in the war, at more than $4 million a pop, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS<\/a> ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.<\/p>\n

The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military\u2019s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say.<\/p>\n

The conflict has also underscored the Pentagon\u2019s overreliance on excessively expensive missiles and munitions, especially air-defense interceptors, as well as concerns about whether the defense industry can develop cheaper arms, especially attack drones<\/a>, far more quickly.<\/p>\n

The Defense Department has not disclosed how many munitions it used in 38 days of war before a cease-fire took effect two weeks ago. The Pentagon says it hit more than 13,000 targets, but officials say that figure masks the vast number of bombs and missiles it used because warplanes, attack planes and artillery typically strike large targets multiple times.<\/p>\n

White House officials have refused to estimate<\/a> the cost of the conflict so far, but two independent groups<\/a> say the expense is staggering: between $28 billion and $35 billion, or just under $1 billion a day.<\/p>\n

In the first two days alone, defense officials have told lawmakers, the military used $5.6 billion of munitions.<\/p>\n

To restore the U.S. global stockpile to its previous size, the United States will have to make tough choices about where to maintain its military strength in the meantime. \u201cAt current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years,\u201d Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has many munitions with adequate inventories, but some critical ground-attack and missile-defense munitions were short before the war and are even shorter now,\u201d said Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which recently published a study<\/a> estimating the status of key munitions.<\/p>\n

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that \u201cthe entire premise of this story is false.\u201d She added: \u201cThe United States of America has the most powerful military in the world, fully loaded with more than enough weapons and munitions, in stockpiles here at home and all around the globe, to effectively defend the homeland and achieve any military operation directed by the commander in chief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon\u2019s chief spokesman, declined to comment on \u201cany specific theater requirements or detail our global resource capabilities,\u201d citing operational security.<\/p>\n

Some Republicans<\/a>, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chairman of the subcommittee that funds the Pentagon, have pressed for an increase in spending on munitions production over several administrations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made that goal a top priority during his tenure.<\/p>\n

Making things more perilous for the Pentagon, officials say, is that the Defense Department is waiting for Congress to approve additional funding before it can pay weapons manufacturers to replenish the depleted American supply. In January, the administration announced that it had secured seven-year agreements with major defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, to increase production capacity for defense systems like missile interceptors.<\/p>\n

The agreement called for quadrupling the production of precision-guided munitions and THAAD missile interceptors. Defense manufacturers, for their part, agreed to fund factory expansions in exchange for secured long-term orders.<\/p>\n

But officials said there had been no movement to actually begin the expanded production, because the Pentagon was scrambling to find the funding.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the military is using its existing weapons supplies at steep rates to meet Central Command\u2019s immediate needs in the Iran war. Certain munition levels are shrinking faster than others.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon, for example, has committed most of its inventory of stealthy, long-range cruise missiles to the fight against Iran. These missiles, called Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, or JASSM-ER, are launched from fighters and bombers and have a range of more than 600 miles. They are designed to penetrate hard targets outside the range of enemy air defenses.<\/p>\n

Since the war started, the military has used about 1,100 JASSM-ER missiles, which cost roughly $1.1 million apiece, leaving roughly 1,500 in the military\u2019s inventories, according to internal Pentagon estimates, a U.S. military official and a congressional official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential combat assessments.<\/p>\n

Tomahawks, which cost about $3.6 million each, are long-range cruise missiles<\/a> that have been widely used for U.S. warfighting since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. They remain a key munition for potential future wars, including one in Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile sufficient munitions exist to wage this war, high expenditure of Tomahawks and other missiles in Operation Epic Fury creates risks for the United States in other theaters \u2014 particularly the Western Pacific,\u201d concluded a C.S.I.S. study<\/a>, which estimated the remaining Tomahawk stockpiles to be around 3,000 missiles.<\/p>\n

Patriot interceptor missiles can cost nearly $4 million each. The United States produced about 600 of them in all of 2025. More than 1,200 have been used in the war so far, according to internal Pentagon estimates and congressional officials.<\/p>\n

Overall, the cost of the war so far is between $25 billion and $35 billion, according to a study this month by the American Enterprise Institute<\/a> compiled by Elaine McCusker, a senior Pentagon official during the first Trump administration. Mr. Cancian of C.S.I.S. said in an email that he and his analysts put the cost of the conflict so far at about $28 billion.<\/p>\n

The military is also incurring unexpected costs from damaged or destroyed aircraft. In the Navy SEAL Team 6 operation to rescue a downed Air Force officer<\/a> in Iran, the military had to destroy two MC-130 cargo planes and at least three MH-6 helicopters inside them after the planes\u2019 nose gear got stuck in the wet sand of a makeshift airstrip. Mr. Cancian estimated the total cost of the lost aircraft at about $275 million. Three replacement planes eventually flew the airman and the commandos to safety, but the Pentagon did not want sensitive technology from the aircraft to fall into Iranian hands.<\/p>\n

All regional military commanders are feeling the strain of shrinking munitions stocks.<\/p>\n

In Europe, the war has led to depletions in weapons systems critical for defending the eastern flank of NATO from Russian aggression, according to Pentagon information reviewed by The New York Times.<\/p>\n

A problem described as serious was the loss of surveillance and attack drones. The demands of the Iran war have also curtailed exercises and training. According to military officials, this hurts the ability to mount offensive operations in Europe, as well as deterrence of potential Russian attacks.<\/p>\n

Asked about the shortcomings, Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the head of U.S. European Command, said in a statement, \u201cOur warfighters are proud of the support we\u2019ve provided to USCENTCOM in support of President Trump\u2019s historic operations against Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the biggest impact has been on troops in Asia.<\/p>\n

Before the war with Iran started, American military commanders redirected the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group from the South China Sea to the Middle East. Since then, two Marine Expeditionary Units, each with about 2,200 Marines, have been sent to the Middle East from the Pacific. The Pentagon has also moved sophisticated air defenses from Asia<\/a> to bolster protection against Iran\u2019s drones and rockets.<\/p>\n

The redirected weapons include Patriot missiles and interceptors from the THAAD system<\/a> in South Korea \u2014 the only Asian ally hosting the advanced missile defense system, deployed by the Pentagon to counter North Korea\u2019s growing missile threat. Now, for the first time, the system\u2019s interceptors are being moved away, according to American officials.<\/p>\n

U.S. readiness in the Pacific was hurt earlier by the Pentagon\u2019s deployment of warships and aircraft to the Middle East after the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023 and after Houthi militia forces in Yemen started attacking ships in the Red Sea to support the Palestinians, the officials say.<\/p>\n

The monthlong bombing campaign against the Houthis last year \u2014 an operation the Pentagon called Rough Rider<\/a> \u2014 was much larger than the Trump administration initially disclosed at the time. The Pentagon used up about $200 million of munitions in the first three weeks alone, U.S. officials said. The costs of the overall operation far exceeded $1 billion when operational and personnel expenses were taken into account, the officials added.<\/p>\n

The American ships and aircraft, as well as the service members working on them, are being pushed at what the military calls a high operating tempo. Even basic equipment maintenance becomes an issue under those grinding conditions.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Adm. Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the head of the military\u2019s Indo-Pacific Command, declined to comment on the arms diverted from Asia to the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Admiral Paparo largely sidestepped the issue of stockpile shortages during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, acknowledging only that \u201cthere are finite limits to the magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Schwirtz and Adam Goldman contributed reporting from London. John Ismay, Helene Cooper and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the Iran war began in late February, the United States has burned through around 1,100 of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[15019,1452,33638,82431,4471,14670,33637,33636,9,24,63,4472,122,124,123,82432,81740,1069,5251,1876],"class_list":{"0":"post-207970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-defense-department","9":"tag-donald-j","10":"tag-drones-pilotless-planes","11":"tag-far-east","12":"tag-hegseth","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-military-aircraft","15":"tag-missiles-and-missile-defense-systems","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-pete","20":"tag-queens","21":"tag-queens-headlines","22":"tag-queens-news","23":"tag-south-and-southeast-asia-and-pacific-areas","24":"tag-stockpiling","25":"tag-trump","26":"tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","27":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}