U.S. Races to Accomplish Iran Mission Before Munitions Run Out

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-races-to-accomplish-iran-mission-before-munitions-run-out-c014acbc

65 64 5 months ago

They used up a lot of the remaining tomahawk inventory apparently. These operations, done without congressional approval, are wasting literal billions. Repositioning multiple carrier groups and spending lots of munitions isn’t cheap. And yet the administration thinks some alleged small scale Somalian fraud deserves all our attention.

lumost2• 5 months ago

If China was to attack Taiwan, now would be the time. The current world order is at least in part based around the notion of the US (and allies) having the military capacity to fight any plausible combination of foes at all times. That this military capacity was used in accordance to a set of rules with input from allies and partners made the system tolerable.

If the US lacks the munitions to fight all of these conflicts, and is unreliable to allies or foes leads to a high likelihood of conflict.

koolala• 5 months ago

Would allies give the US munitions to stop that possible outcome?

tim-tday• 5 months ago

Pretty sure they’ll wait about 9 months. They have a schedule after all.

CyanLite2• 5 months ago

Fortunately, China just decided to fire most of their military leadership and replaced them with inexperienced, but loyal grunts.

nebula88042• 5 months ago

There is so much BS on both sides of the aisle so it seems impossible to get a clear picture but didn't Iran prepare better than Venezuela in terms of deployment of Chinese radar and other security defenses? Seems like there has been no conversation whatsoever about Chinese defenses, were they bypassed again? If so, then China must be reassessing. (Again dont know whats real and whats fake anymore)

fma2• 5 months ago

I think this is only true if the United States takes armaments from the Pacific theater.

rasz2• 5 months ago

used up a lot of the remaining tomahawk inventory apparently

4000 in stockpiles, they shot maybe couple hundred in one day. Could sustain for 2 weeks at this pace.

panny• 5 months ago

archive link https://archive.is/usjGR

eqvinox5• 5 months ago

Interesting aspect: if the ammo is all used up in Iran, it can't be sold or given to Ukraine.

Tinfoil hat time?

onlyrealcuzzo4• 5 months ago

You know who exports a lot of oil and gas NOT through the straight of hormuz?

slater• 5 months ago

Brunei?

eqvinox5• 5 months ago

Doesn't even matter if it's a direct effect, the increase in oil prices is/will be enough.

ParentiSoundSys6• 5 months ago

It's just funny that people can't stomach that their own ruling class is leading them down the primrose path so they have to go casting about for a foreign bogeyman who's making it happen, despite the fact that every major Western power has bent the knee to this action against Iran.

ajam1507• 5 months ago

America?

mrtksn2• 5 months ago

That happened when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel started a full blown war in Gaza. The whole situation was very convenient for Russia, weapon deliveries were slashed to supply Israel.

feb012025• 5 months ago

The attack is for Israel... enough already

ethbr1• 5 months ago

If the ammo is all used up in Iran, new ammo must be procured.

This lets the current administration direct funding away from established military primes to their preferred vendors (i.e. political patronage).

lupire• 5 months ago

If this is true, the real problem is why the US was so undersupplied in core munitions.

spaghetdefects• 5 months ago

I think the real problem is that the US keeps attacking people at the behest of Israel and to the determent of US citizens.

ParentiSoundSys6• 5 months ago

It's not to the detriment of our ruling classes who have their hands on the actual levers of power.

sigwinch2• 5 months ago

The 12 days back in June depleted half of Iran’s stockpile and a quarter of the US interceptor global stockpile.

ZunarJ5• 5 months ago

We could have had healthcare.

onlyrealcuzzo4• 5 months ago

US healthcare costs on the order of $3T per year.

The Iraq war cost about $2T over a decade.

You could have about 10% subsidized healthcare, which I would obviously argue is better than pointless war killing tons of people.

But you couldn't just "have healthcare".

fma2• 5 months ago

I don't think OP is talking about a specific war, but the overall cost to maintain such a capability and project force all over the world. At least that is what I perceive when people lament about lack of healthcare.

The United States military budget is now 1.5 trillion dollars per year.

eqvinox5• 5 months ago

You're forgetting that U.S. healthcare costs are also massively overblown compared to other western countries, due to the absence of proper collective bargaining. (And possibly even collusion between insurers and healthcare providers to rip off citizens and the government.)

dcel• 5 months ago

The UK spends around £200bn a year on public healthcare that covers everyone, for a population around 1/5th the size. Scale that up and convert to USD and you’re still well under half the $3tn figure you quoted.

shermozle• 5 months ago

Yep just like many things Americans are sure can't be done, universal healthcare has never been done anywhere in the world, ever. And healthcare everywhere costs what Americans are willing to pay (public and private money).

See also: not having daily mass shootings.

moogly• 5 months ago

[flagged]

aftbit2• 5 months ago

This is reminding us something that we should never have forgotten - modern war has an insatiable demand for munitions.

To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year. There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.

The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025. Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.

Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany. World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans. The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.

Modern mechanized combat demands an insane manufacturing and logistics chain. It can burn through stockpiles incredibly fast, especially of high capability expensive munitions. War production levels are utterly unsustainable during peace time.

This is why peer and near-peer conflict is as much an economic and productive game as it is a military one. Shock and awe takes a tremendous amount of resources to accomplish at all, let alone sustain.

ParentiSoundSys6• 5 months ago

If you don't have an industrial base, you don't have a military. Good thing we hollowed ours out to juice the S&P to 7000!

kaycey2022• 5 months ago

You’re saying the enemy doesn’t care about the Dow?

sigwinch2• 5 months ago

It’s been over 100 years since the exchange was closed for war. They might open it for manual trading if algorithmic (80% of volume) is attacked. I bet we would never get attribution and that the US admin benefits by saying any damage must be Iran.

bediger4000• 5 months ago

Wait I was just told that the US was going to foster human warfighters, not wimpy logistics desk jockeys.

Warfighting and good grooming were said to be key.

rasz2• 5 months ago

US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year.

Just a reminder that THAAD interceptor price is not due to material cost or difficulty to manufacture. Its approximately as expensive as gold per kilogram precisely because its made in such small numbers as part of a gold plated military contract.

Ajakks2• 5 months ago

Very well said.

Your whole comment I kept recalling "The Art of War" - which is of course, mostly about how not to go to war, how if you must go to war, it needs to be efficient, bc the war will decimate the State faster than the enemy ever could, but be really smart about it, bc not only is it incredibly expensive, you could also lose, and its very hard to recover from.

Best to avoid warring if you at all can - thousands of years later, still true.

mrtksn2• 5 months ago

That's why decapitation attacks can be very efficient, as wars are actually just extra-election elite changes since regular people minding their own business don't actually intend to kill some other group of people even if they are outrage and propaganda filled.

The problem is, those decapitation attacks work when the institutions are weak or structured in a way that all the power is in the hands of one person. It's always funny to watch in Hollywood movies everybody scrambled to save the US president and the US president being extremeyly important. Even in real life Americans swear in a replacement ASAP when the president dies (i.e. Kennedy). That's very funny from European perspective, RIP to the guy but just elect someone else why you are making it a big deal?

Also, the wars in Europe all have stories about how soldiers pausing the fight one the frontlines and having a chat sharing meals exchanging cigarettes with the opponent etc.

aftbit2• 5 months ago

Trying a little experiment. Here's the same comment as above, but I asked Claude to research my claims and add web citations. Any errors in content are my own - I originally wrote the comment with no AI assistance and only brief web searching to check my numbers.

---

This is reminding us something that we should never have forgotten - modern war has an insatiable demand for munitions.

To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025.[1][2] We produce just under 100 per year.[3] There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.[4]

The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025.[5] Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.

Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany.[6][7] World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans.[8] The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.[9][10]

*Sources:*

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/middleeast/us-thaad-missile-i...

[2] https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/us-army-rais...

[3] https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/lockheed-pentagon-ink-pl...

[4] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5713637-lockheed-martin-q...

[5] https://dronexl.co/2025/10/22/ukraine-deploys-9000-drones-da...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Crisis_of_1915

[7] https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/shells-cri...

[8] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13518046.2024.2...

[9] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA416944.pdf

[10] https://wp.oldmagazinearticles.com/magazine-articles/the-col...

duxup• 5 months ago

Lets say I'm on team regime change... aren't I also hoping someone we like somehow rises up and takes over that whole country too?

That seems unlikely.

tim333• 5 months ago

One possibility is the Shah's son takes over as a provisional leader. Here he is on 60 minutes today https://youtu.be/x2mIUZ3WCEg?t=110

It's tricky because the opposition don't have arms so it needs some of the guys who do to turn.

The US/Israel are being quite brutal though - killing all the regime leaders (as in youtube https://youtu.be/2TZF8_wwAUs?t=572)

orwin2• 5 months ago

The Shah son doesn't have the local support his father had. Part of the diaspora like him enough, but the clans that brought him to power are way less aligned with the British ans US than they use to be.

On the other hand, exchanging an anti-US dictator for a US-aligned dictator is probably a lot better for the average citizen because your country won't be embargoed anymore, you just have to accept US oil companies on your territory.

TheAlchemist• 5 months ago

What is the optimal strategy for Iran, if they assume that the regime can withstand the intensive bombardments and people won't take it to the streets like US / Israel are assuming ?

Wouldn't it be to only launch cheap missiles / drones for a week or two to deplete interceptors and only then start using more advanced missiles ?

pseudohadamard2• 5 months ago

Same as the optimal strategy for Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, ...

1. Bomb everything.

2. Bomb everything some more.

3. ?

4. Profit! Peace and democracy breaks out.

U.S. Races to Accomplish Iran Mission Before Munitions Run Out

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