The war in Iran has lasted only eight weeks, but the U.S. military has drained its supply of critical and costly weapons, according to a report from the New York Times.
Blowing through a staggering amount of its weapons cache, including around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China, close to the total number remaining in its stockpile.
Pete Hegseth’s Department of War his fired off nearly 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, at more than $4 million a pop. Add to that more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal DoD estimates and congressional officials.
The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military’s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East 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 Defense Department is waiting for Congress to approve additional funding before it can pay weapons manufacturers to replenish the depleted American supply.
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.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shot down the Times’ reporting, claiming in a statement that “the entire premise of this story is false.”
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