Mark F. Cancian (Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, ret.) writes in CSIS that Trump started a war with Hegseth spending half the Patriot, THAAD, and PrSM inventory into it, without any timeline and without any supplemental filed before the first shot. In a procurement system that delivers replacement rounds two to four years after contract, that means the U.S. blew it.
If the US has seriously depleted its arms stockpile in its current campaign in Iran, then its arsenal was paltry. America has spent $1 trillion per year on defense for the past several years, and its armament starts to run dry after a few months of relatively light intermittent bombing?
@Jesse it’s been months of extra-heavy use:
https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/08/04/us-used-virtually-all-long-range-precision-missiles-during-iran-war-sources-say/
“The U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during America’s five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military’s readiness for future conflicts.
The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used ‘virtually all’ of these weapons, according to two of the sources.”