The US army’s weapons stockpiles, together with its stock of essential air protection missiles, stay severely depleted following a serious flare up of the war with Iran in latest weeks, in accordance to three sources acquainted with latest Pentagon information and a brand new report by exterior analysts.
A substantive settlement to end the battle stays elusive, and the scarcity of the missiles might influence the US’ skill to have interaction on different fronts.
In a Monday report, researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies suppose tank estimated that fewer than 827 Patriot interceptors stay in US stockpiles, and fewer than 278 THAAD ballistic missile interceptors are left. The three sources acquainted with the matter, who requested anonymity to focus on the US stockpile, informed NCS that the CSIS estimates had been shut to inner authorities figures.
The figures characterize a big depletion of the pre-war stockpile, which CSIS estimated numbered round 2,200 Patriots (of the platform’s two most-modernized variants) and 452 THAAD missiles. The methods are the US army’s main technique of taking down incoming enemy ballistic missiles, and every interceptor missile prices thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
“Diminished stockpiles may force the United States and its coalition partners to take more risks with interceptions. There are no good alternatives to Patriot and THAAD for ballistic missile defense. Navy ships, with Standard Missiles that can intercept such threats, generally are too far away,” the authors of the CSIS report wrote.
President Donald Trump expressed his want to replenish “the more sophisticated stuff” when requested about munitions stockpiles aboard Air Force One on Monday, however the president held that the inventories are “in very good shape.” And Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed senators final week that with out the extra funding it’s asking for, the Pentagon will “not get the munitions” it wants.
NCS previously reported that Caine cited the dwindling munitions stockpile in a Friday assembly with Trump throughout which the commander-in-chief was weighing a serious escalation in the war. Trump, whom Caine and others briefed on further downsides to ramping up the battle, introduced a pause in strikes towards Iran after the assembly. But that pause could have been short-lived. On Tuesday US and Saudi forces performed joint strikes on Iranian proxies in Iraq, and after the US army introduced it intercepted a “surprise attack” by Iran on US forces in the Middle East.
The report’s lead writer, CSIS protection analyst and retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, told NCS earlier this month that continued combating with Iran might deplete stockpiles so low that it might influence the US army’s skill to struggle with China and even North Korea.
NBC News reported that US commanders, motivated by a want not to waste their interceptor missiles, are opting not to shoot down Iranian projectiles which might be on observe to hit unpopulated areas of US bases in the area. The reported tactic signifies a change from prior air and missile protection practices in the area, the place a US-manned Patriot detachment defended a mostly evacuated Al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar, towards a wave of Iranian ballistic missiles in June 2025.
The Defense Department has accelerated its efforts to broaden interceptor missile manufacturing in latest months, together with two deals inked this week to increase Patriot and THAAD rocket motor manufacturing, however a spokesperson declined to reply questions on when the growth will lead to outcomes.
Analysts say it might take years to absolutely replenish the US stockpile of high-end munitions, like Patriot missiles, due to the lead time for producing these weapons.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, in a July 28 assertion an identical to two despatched to NCS on the subject since April, mentioned the army “is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing. We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests.”
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have largely blamed former President Joe Biden’s administration for the munitions shortages. But the difficulty has been exacerbated by the war with Iran, throughout which CSIS assesses the US army has fired greater than 60% of its key Patriot and THAAD interceptors.
The pending request from the Pentagon for supplemental protection funding contains a number of provisions associated to the stockpile. Hegseth argued to Senate appropriators in a listening to on the supplemental funding ask final week that the Biden administration “took munitions one-for-one and sent them to Ukraine and had tried to replace them with the same bureaucratic process that was too slow and didn’t replace them in real time.”
But lawmakers of each events have argued that the shortfalls are greater than anybody administration and require bipartisan help to resolve.
“The shortfalls in munitions have been well known to this committee for some time,” mentioned Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in final Tuesday’s appropriations listening to. “While these munitions shortfalls have been years in the making, they are growing increasingly urgent.”
NCS’s Kevin Liptak and Jim Sciutto contributed to this report.
Davis Winkie’s work at NCS is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). NCS retains full editorial management of the reporting.