RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. More than five months into the United States' war on Iran, President Donald Trump and his administration are insisting America's arsenal remains full—despite fears from officials and analysts that dwindling stockpiles of some of the country's most effective weapons could stop U.S. troops from being able to stare down Russia and China in a potential conflict.
The U.S. has "massive amounts" of munitions, "especially of certain types," Trump said in a post on social media overnight into Thursday.
The president said his statement was in response to "treasonous" accounts emerging in recent days, after several outlets reported the U.S. had run down its stocks of specific weapons, both to attack Iranian targets and to defend American allies and bases in the Middle East. Trump was said to have called off a planned two-week strike campaign on Iran in late July, partly because of anxieties over stockpiles.
Trump, according to The Washington Post , recently asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth why he had been given apparently false information on munitions shortages, which could limit his options for striking Iran, during a meeting at Camp David, the Maryland presidential retreat.
Trump told Hegseth he thought the stockpiles issue "had been fixed," the Post reported, citing anonymous sources. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the reported discussion "never happened" and Trump believed Hegseth to be doing a "tremendous job."
As the weeks have dragged on without a deal to end the increasingly unpopular conflict between the U.S. and Iran, the White House has been unable to prise Iran's grip from the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for international trade, and repeatedly threatened overwhelming attacks on Tehran before rolling back on these ominous pledges.
Iran denied talks were taking place this week, with questions hovering over how long the U.S. could carry on bombing Iran before it ran out of its most effective weapons, despite U.S. defense companies feeling the pressure from the Pentagon to surge production.
White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to Newsweek on Tuesday that the U.S. had "more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles" but defense companies were being urged to "constantly produce more made-in-America weapons."
Beyond the Middle East, the war has left Ukraine—which is heavily reliant on U.S. air defense missiles—staring down Russian missile barrages without enough interceptor missiles, and prompted observers to warn the U.S. couldn't properly face China in a war if Beijing moved against Taiwan in the near future.
The U.S. now has "inadequate" supplies of air defense missiles for a conflict with China's military, according to a report released by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, on Tuesday. The U.S. would run out of air defense missiles in "the first few days" of a conflict if China targeted U.S. bases, the foundation said.
Exact stockpiles are classified, meaning it's hard to know exactly how many missiles remain ready for U.S. troops to use, and where they're stored or deployed.
But five types of offensive and defensive missiles have been identified as running low because of the U.S. strikes on Iran, and Iran's persistent targeting of U.S. bases and allies across the Middle East.
The U.S. Army has used up "virtually all" of its Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and the Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs), Reuters reported on Tuesday. Both are ground-launched ballistic missiles, allowing U.S. forces to hit targets in Iran with pinpoint accuracy from hundreds of kilometers away and keep U.S. soldiers further away from where strikes land.
They also reduce the need for aircraft, which could be vulnerable to air defenses, to carry out aerial assaults.
PrSMs, which were first used in combat during the Iran war, are being phased in as the successor to ATACMS and have a publicly-advertised range of upwards of 499 kilometers. Different variants of the PrSM are under development, with a version able to hit targets more than 1,000 kilometers away in the pipeline.
Tomahawks are land-attack cruise missiles typically launched from ships, like the destroyers deployed in the Middle East. The U.S. has used Tomahawks since the 1980s, and they are a staple of U.S. Navy operations.
The war has put pressure on air defense missiles, too. Rather than attacking an enemy target, these are used to intercept incoming threats, like missiles, drones or planes.
Patriot air defense systems are one of the world's most sought-after air defense systems, credited with intercepting supposedly unstoppable Russian hypersonic missile strikes in Ukraine. Along with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, they are the main defense against Iranian ballistic missiles in the region.
But the missiles, which were already hard to get hold of before the war, are also highly sought after across the world, like in Ukraine. Kyiv said shortages of Patriot interceptors meant none of Russia's ballistic and hypersonic missiles fired at the Ukrainian capital overnight into Wednesday were stopped. The barrages killed at least 17 people in and around Kyiv.
The U.S. had roughly 452 THAAD interceptors before the war, but had as few as 234 left by the end of July, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said last month.
Before the start of the conflict, the U.S. had approximately 2,330 interceptors for its Patriot air defense systems, according to the CSIS estimates. By July 27, this had dipped as low as 759.
The U.S. has now expended nearly 80 percent of its pre-war inventory of THAAD missiles and approximately half of its Patriot interceptors, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing two unnamed sources. Two sources told Reuters internal dat...
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