The United States has burned through billions of dollars’ worth of its critical weapons stockpile in the war with Iran, according to a report.
The conflict, which began on February 28, has seen the Pentagon using more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles, each of which costs more than $4 million.
The military has also used up around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles stockpiled for a war with China, according to congressional officials and internal Defense Department estimates obtained by the New York Times.
More than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles have been fired, too, which is around 10 times the amount currently bought by the U.S. Military each year.
Internal Pentagon estimates also suggested that around 1,100 JASSM-ER missiles, which cost around $1.1 million each, have been used. That has left just 1,500 of the projectiles in the military’s inventory.
“At current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years,” Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said this week.
According to a study conducted in April by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the war has cost the United States between $25 billion and $35 billion. In the first two days of the conflict alone, the military burned through around $5.6 billion worth of munitions, a congressional source told The Hill in March.
Officials told the NYT that the Defense Department is still waiting for Congress to approve additional funding before it can pay manufacturers to replenish the military’s drained supplies.
The Trump administration announced in January that it had secured seven-year agreements with major defense contractors in order to increase production capacity for defense systems. That meant the defense manufacturers would agree to fund factory expansions in exchange for the long-term orders.
However, officials told the publication that there has been no effort to begin the expanded production effort since the Pentagon is still scrambling to find the funding it needs.
“The 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,” Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the NYT.
Pentagon information obtained by the newspaper also found that the war has led to depletions in essential weapon systems deployed to defend NATO’s eastern flank in the event of Russian aggression. The ability to launch offensive operations in the region has also been damaged due to the loss of attack and surveillance drones.
Operations in the Pacific have been reduced, too, with the USS Abraham Lincoln being moved from the South China Sea to the Middle East before the conflict began. A third aircraft carrier, the USS George HW Bush, has also been moved to the region.
Officials told the publication that Patriot missiles from the THAAD system in South Korea, which were deployed to curb the looming threat from North Korean missiles, are being moved away to support the war effort with Iran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed in a statement given to the NYT that the “entire premise of this story is false.”
“The 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,” she said.
The Independent has contacted the White House and the Department of Defense for comment.
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