Iran war sees US burn through expensive weapons, testing inventory limits

Commanders are concerned about the Pentagon's shift of long-range precision weapons from the Asia-Pacific region to West Asia, congressional officials say

By Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan

 

Since the Iran war began in late February, the United States has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China, close to the total number remaining in the US stockpile. The military has fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year. 

The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles in the war, at more than $4 million a pop, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials. 

 

The Iran war has significantly drained much of the US military’s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to West Asia from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say. 

The conflict has also underscored the Pentagon’s overreliance on excessively expensive missiles and munitions, especially air-defense interceptors, as well as concerns about whether the defense industry can develop cheaper arms, especially attack drones, far more quickly. 

The Defense Department has not disclosed how many munitions it used in 38 days of war before a cease-fire took effect two weeks ago. The Pentagon says it hit more than 13,000 targets, but officials say that figure masks the vast number of bombs and missiles it used because warplanes, attack planes and artillery typically strike large targets multiple times. 

White House officials have refused to estimate the cost of the conflict so far, but two independent groups say the expense is staggering: between $28 billion and $35 billion, or just under $1 billion a day. 

In the first two days alone, defense officials have told lawmakers, the military used $5.6 billion of munitions. 

To restore the US global stockpile to its previous size, the United States will have to make tough choices about where to maintain its military strength in the meantime. “At current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years,” SeNator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said this week. 

“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,” said Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which recently published a study estimating the status of key munitions. 

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that “the entire premise of this story is false.” She added: “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.” 

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, declined to comment on “any specific theater requirements or detail our global resource capabilities,” citing operational security. 

Some Republicans, including SeNator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chairman of the subcommittee that funds the Pentagon, have pressed for an increase in spending on munitions production over several administrations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made that goal a top priority during his tenure. 

Making things more perilous for the Pentagon, officials say, is that the Defense Department is waiting for Congress to approve additional funding before it can pay weapons manufacturers to replenish the depleted American supply. In January, the administration announced that it had secured seven-year agreements with major defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, to increase production capacity for defense systems like missile interceptors. 

The agreement called for quadrupling the production of precision-guided munitions and THAAD missile interceptors. Defense manufacturers, for their part, agreed to fund factory expansions in exchange for secured long-term orders. 

But officials said there had been no movement to actually begin the expanded production, because the Pentagon was scrambling to find the funding. 

In the meantime, the military is using its existing weapons supplies at steep rates to meet Central Command’s immediate needs in the Iran war. Certain munition levels are shrinking faster than others. 

The Pentagon, for example, has committed most of its inventory of stealthy, long-range cruise missiles to the fight against Iran.  These missiles, called Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, or JASSM-ER, are launched from fighters and bombers and have a range of more than 600 miles. They are designed to penetrate hard targets outside the range of enemy air defenses. 

Since the war started, the military has used about 1,100 JASSM-ER missiles, which cost roughly $1.1 million apiece, leaving roughly 1,500 in the military’s inventories, according to internal Pentagon estimates, a US military official and a congressional official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential combat assessments. 

Tomahawks, which cost about $3.6 million each, are long-range cruise missiles that have been widely used for US warfighting since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. They remain a key munition for potential future wars, including one in Asia. 

“While sufficient munitions exist to wage this war, high expenditure of Tomahawks and other missiles in Operation Epic Fury creates risks for the United States in other theaters — particularly the Western Pacific,” concluded a C.S.I.S. study, which estimated the remaining Tomahawk stockpiles to be around 3,000 missiles. 

Patriot interceptor missiles can cost nearly $4 million each. The United States produced about 600 of them in all of 2025. More than 1,200 have been used in the war so far, according to internal Pentagon estimates and congressional officials. 

Overall, the cost of the war so far is between $25 billion and $35 billion, according to a study this month by the American Enterprise Institute compiled by Elaine McCusker, a senior Pentagon official during the first Trump administration. Mr. Cancian of C.S.I.S. said in an email that he and his analysts put the cost of the conflict so far at about $28 billion. 

The military is also incurring unexpected costs from damaged or destroyed aircraft. In the Navy SEAL Team 6 operation to rescue a downed Air Force officer in Iran, the military had to destroy two MC-130 cargo planes and at least three MH-6 helicopters inside them after the planes’ nose gear got stuck in the wet sand of a makeshift airstrip. Mr. Cancian estimated the total cost of the lost aircraft at about $275 million. Three replacement planes eventually flew the airman and the commandos to safety, but the Pentagon did not want sensitive technology from the aircraft to fall into Iranian hands. 

All regional military commanders are feeling the strain of shrinking munitions stocks. 

In Europe, the war has led to depletions in weapons systems critical for defending the eastern flank of Nato from Russian aggression, according to Pentagon information reviewed by The New York Times. 

A problem described as serious was the loss of surveillance and attack drones. The demands of the Iran war have also curtailed exercises and training. According to military officials, this hurts the ability to mount offensive operations in Europe, as well as deterrence of potential Russian attacks. 

Asked about the shortcomings, Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the head of US European Command, said in a statement, “Our warfighters are proud of the support we’ve provided to USCENTCOM in support of President Trump’s historic operations against Iran.” 

But the biggest impact has been on troops in Asia. 

Before the war with Iran started, American military commanders redirected the USS. Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group from the South China Sea to West Asia. Since then, two Marine Expeditionary Units, each with about 2,200 Marines, have been sent to West Asia from the Pacific. The Pentagon has also moved sophisticated air defenses from Asia to bolster protection against Iran’s drones and rockets. 

The redirected weapons include Patriot missiles and interceptors from the THAAD system in South Korea — the only Asian ally hosting the advanced missile defense system, deployed by the Pentagon to counter North Korea’s growing missile threat. Now, for the first time, the system’s interceptors are being moved away, according to American officials. 

US readiness in the Pacific was hurt earlier by the Pentagon’s deployment of warships and aircraft to West Asia after the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023 and after Houthi militia forces in Yemen started attacking ships in the Red Sea to support the Palestinians, the officials say. 

The monthlong bombing campaign against the Houthis last year — an operation the Pentagon called Rough Rider — was much larger than the Trump administration initially disclosed at the time. The Pentagon used up about $200 million of munitions in the first three weeks alone, US officials said. The costs of the overall operation far exceeded $1 billion when operational and personnel expenses were taken into account, the officials added. 

The American ships and aircraft, as well as the service members working on them, are being pushed at what the military calls a high operating tempo. Even basic equipment maintenance becomes an issue under those grinding conditions. 

A spokeswoman for Adm Samuel J Paparo Jr., the head of the military’s Indo-Pacific Command, declined to comment on the arms diverted from Asia to West Asia. 

Admiral Paparo largely sidestepped the issue of stockpile shortages during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, acknowledging only that “there are finite limits to the magazine.”