Iran war has drained U.S. supplies of critical, costly weapons

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/us/politics/iran-war-cost-military.html

by samsolomon • 3 months ago

39 68 3 months ago

jacknews• 3 months ago

It's all beginning to fit together a bit too neatly.

We've had 'China invades Taiwan in 2027' on the radar for a couple of years, and now Trump is disarming the US, and demonstrating it's impotence in certain areas, just in time.

I think we need a new script-writer.

mcphage5• 3 months ago

You've got to set up the story beats beforehand, otherwise your viewers will complain that things show up out of nowhere.

jmyeet2• 3 months ago

The China invades Taiwan fearmongering is kinda silly for two main reasons:

1. Crossing 100 miles of ocean (between mainland China and Taiwan) may as well be 10,000 miles. It's essentially impassable.. Just look at Iran, where a country that has endured decades of sanctions is impossible to invade for the largest and most wel-funded military on Earth. In Iran, the logistics of a sea landing mirror the size and complexity of D-Day and we just don't have that military anymore. Neither does China.

China would have to land somewhere between 500k and 1M soldiers in Taiwan then supply them. They simply don't have that amphibious capability. And anyone who thinks they do just doesn't understand how complicated and extensive the logistics are. Vehicles, weapons, medical supplies, food, ammunition, repair facilities, etc etc etc.

China could blockade but invade? No. Which brings me to...

2. China has absolutely no need to invade Taiwan, strategically. All but 10 countries on Earth have the so-called One China policy, which is a recognition that Taiwan isn't an independent nation and is part of China. China thinks very long term and believes the situation will ultimately be resolved. It's the US who thinks very short-term and likes to invade without thinking of the consequences.

What would an invasion of Taiwan (if they could pull it off, which they can't) do to China's standing in the world, diplomatic and trade relations, etc? Think about Russia invading Ukraine. Suddenly Finland and Sweden abandon their neutrality and join NATO. The invasion has actually strengthened NATO.

Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't listen to the biggest arms dealer on Earth about what a military threat China is and how we need to expand the military and buy even more weapons.

lossolo• 3 months ago

What would an invasion of Taiwan (if they could pull it off, which they can't) do to China's standing in the world, diplomatic and trade relations, etc? Think about Russia invading Ukraine. Suddenly Finland and Sweden abandon their neutrality and join NATO. The invasion has actually strengthened NATO.

This is especially true now, when the US is shooting itself in the foot over Iran, making China look like a rational and stable actor and the US like a chaotic and unreliable partner. There is no gain for China in forcibly taking over Taiwan, they will try to do it through other means over the next 10–20 years. They know that using force to take Taiwan would be the biggest gift they could give the US right now.

ericmay10• 3 months ago

If you assume that war with China is on the horizon, it's arguable that this is a good thing for the US to see weaknesses exposed now while there is still something to do about it. Even if that war (and I hope it's not) is not on the horizon, real battlefield testing in what is becoming a new battlefield of drones and smaller missiles/weapons is necessary and highly valuable. Contrast that with, for example, China who has yet to demonstrate its combined arms ability, and its soldiers and equipment have yet to be tested in any meaningful way. There's a lot of value in battlefield experience - Ukraine itself is a great example.

Although the war in Iran is very obviously justified, I am writing here a bit more broadly about some of the trade-offs for the military. Our defense industrial base has become sophisticated, expensive, and slow because we would increasingly get sold more "advanced" weapons. That's great when you are facing an enemy like Iran without an ability to really fight back, but in a war with a peer state you need more munitions faster and cheaper. Industrial production is key, else you become quickly exhausted.

mcphage5• 3 months ago

Although the war in Iran is very obviously justified,

Wait, what now?

ericmay10• 3 months ago

Can't have another North Korea sitting in the Middle East with control over so much oil supply. Don't want Gulf States to go and get nuclear weapons in response to Iran getting them (nuclear non-proliferation).

spiderfarmer• 3 months ago

Spent billions on an unnecessary and ILLEGAL war that killed innocent people, American and allied soldiers, depleted your weapons, burned every ally you had in the world, created millions of enemies and potential terrorists, increased prices for your population, SO MUCH WINNING.

And we have not nearly seen the end of it!

Today I heard that the regime in the USA is considering PUNISHMENT for NATO allies for not joining the war that is just an excursion, even though they were not obligated to join or help, they also were not consulted or even informed in any way about the 'plans'.

And they weren't even needed, according to the clown that millions of easily manipulated Americans voted for.

I feel nothing but disgust for that country right now.

Respect has to be earned.

Planktonne2• 3 months ago

Given what the US has been doing/threatening to do recently, it's hard to see this as a problem.

fifilura• 3 months ago

Those systems could have been used to prevent Russia from trying to annihilate the Ukrainian civilization.

USA is not even paying for it anymore so it would have been pure income.

_DeadFred_16• 3 months ago

Iran has threatened to wipe out my country and wished death to us Americans for 40+ years.

DrProtic5• 3 months ago

Killing children is costly business.

_DeadFred_16• 3 months ago

Especially when you use smart weapons to try to minimize it from happening as collatoral damage (though that doesn't change the awefulness when a school seems to have wrongly been targeted, smart weapons are only as good as their target information).

It's much cheaper to just gun down 30,000 protestors in the street protesting that they don't want to be raped by Islamic religious morality police if they don't wear hats. Or to just fire missiles randomly at civilian areas such as the one that resulted in 11 year old Nesia Karadi dying today from the sever wounds she sustained from Iran's missiles fired into Israeli civilian areas.

tastyface• 3 months ago

"A whole civilization will die tonight"

DrProtic5• 3 months ago

We have a lot of videos of protests in Iran yet no videos of mass killings whatsoever.

30k murders is the same as Iraq’s WMD but people are too gullible to see that.

I see how smart those bombs are in Iran and Lebanon, they are able to surgically destroy whole residential buildings.

za3faran7• 3 months ago

We don't even know if that number is correct (the 30k protesters, especially given the heavy mossad invovlement), but let's pretend to care about human life and kill even more. Didn't trump threaten to wipe out an entire civilization?

jmyeet2• 3 months ago

One of the issues that came up when Russia invaded Ukraine was that Russia just didn't have the weapons they thought they did, particularly tanks. There's been a bunch of corruption where generals have pocketed funds and just kicked the can down the street.

The US now spends $1T+ a year on war and is asking for $1.5T next year. At least half of that is weapon systems. A lot of these are probably way too expensive and because of multiple suppliers, incredibly hard to scale up. For the missile interceptors, it may take 3-5 years. Logistically, imagine if there was way more standardization of parts so this was easier to scale? A bit like the missing Russian tanks, US military procurement is corrupt. We have the weapon systems we bought but we pay way too much. So we're basically paying $1T+ for a military that can't do anything about the Iranian military. The disparity is so large that one day of sustaining the war is a good part of what the Iranian military costs for a year.

Last year it was widely rumored that the 12 day war ended because the US and Israel were running out of missile interceptors. That's kind of why many didn't expect this war to happen because that shortage was never solved [1]. It's evidence that the US expected this to be a decapitation strike like Venezuela and for it to be over in a matter of days. This problem is reportedly dire [2].

But that was never going to happen and now the US has mired itself in a war it cannot end without a humiliating defeat and withdrawal.

We don't have exact figures because of censorship but it was estimated at the start of this that ~90% of missiles were being intercepted over Israel and now that figure was ~50% before the ceasefire. Ballistic missiles and drones in particular are cheaper to produce than their respective interceptors and can be produced in much higher volume. Launchers are cheap and easy to produce.

Another telling factor in all of this is the US military's continued use of so-called "standoff" weapons. This includes Tomahawk missiles as well as precision-guided muntiions from planes. You generally don't want to use these if you can because you sacrifice ordinance for fuel. So why do you do it? Because you don't have the air superiority you need.

Those weapons too are more expensive and slow to scale up production.

It's incredibly damaging to US interests too that they've been unable and/or unwilling to defend allies and their own bases in the Gulf.

What I hope comes out of this is some pushback on why exactly we're spending $1T (or $1.5T) a year and what exactly we're getting for that. It's an unimaginable amount of money that could otherwise do so much good. Yet instead we're acting like a belligerent yet still failing empire.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/world/middleeast/israel-s...

[2] https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israeli-missile-interceptors-...

benterix• 3 months ago

It's incredibly damaging to US interests too that they've been unable and/or unwilling to defend allies and their own bases in the Gulf.

The fact that the Gulf turned to Ukraine for protection is one of these strange turnouts one would never expect a few years ago.

josefritzishere• 3 months ago

This is sort of a subtitle under the headline of unprovoked brutality and naked incompetence that brought us here.

isolay• 3 months ago

Incompetence only if viewed from a citizen's perspective. From the perspective of the kleptocrats, it's working as intended. They couldn't care less if the country or the whole world goes to shit as long as they make a profit.

Iran war has drained U.S. supplies of critical, costly weapons

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