War against Iran: US missile stockpiles under pressure

After nearly forty days of intense strikes against Iran, the United States suspended its operations to allow for negotiations. This pause comes as American arsenals have been significantly depleted, raising questions about Washington's ability to cope with other simultaneous crises.

The toll is heavy in terms of munitions. According to the White House, US forces struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran during Operation Epic Fury, while air defenses intercepted more than 1,700 Iranian drones and ballistic missiles. The total cost of the war amounts to $37,5 billion, the vast majority of which was spent on munitions.

Donald Trump denied any supply problems, telling the Wall Street Journal, "We have far more ammunition than anybody else in the world, and far more than we need." Yet, his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, asked the Senate for an additional $87 billion to address "critical shortfalls," including equipment deficiencies. The New York Times also reported that Trump had been advised against escalating the conflict to avoid further depleting stockpiles.

Figures compiled by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) provide a concrete measure of the scale of the expenditures. More than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles were fired during the conflict, and stockpiles are not expected to return to pre-war levels until 2031. Each missile costs approximately $2,6 million. As for air defense systems, some 1,430 Patriot interceptors were used—out of an estimated pre-war stockpile of 2,330—at a cost of $4 million each, to shoot down Iranian drones that cost only $20,000 to $50,000 apiece.

The more sophisticated THAAD system, capable of intercepting high-altitude ballistic missiles, was also called upon: between 190 and 290 missiles were fired from an estimated stockpile of 360. With only nine operational THAAD batteries in the world, including seven American ones, this expenditure worries military planners.

“It depends on the type of munition, but it takes anywhere from one to five years to manufacture a single missile,” explains Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior advisor to CSIS. “And there’s nothing you can do to speed that up.” The missiles being delivered today were funded in 2023, he clarifies.

This situation is all the more worrying as the United States approaches what strategists call the "Davidson window," named after Admiral Philip Davidson, who warned in 2021 that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could occur "within the next six years." In 2023, former CIA Director William Burns estimated that Beijing would be ready to act by 2027. Cancian speaks of a "window of vulnerability" during which the United States will lack the necessary depth of munitions in the event of a conflict in the Pacific. China, which reportedly studied American air defenses closely during the Iran-Iraq War, has invested heavily in hypersonic missiles and drone swarm tactics.

Ukraine is also suffering the consequences of these decisions. In October 2025, even before the start of Operation Epic Fury, Trump refused to deliver Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv in order to preserve American stockpiles. Volodymyr Zelenskyy quantified the problem: the United States produces between 60 and 65 missiles per month, or 700 to 800 per year, while 803 were launched on the first day of Operation Epic Fury alone. Trump nevertheless surprised European capitals by recently proposing that Ukraine produce Patriot missiles on its own soil, following the model of agreements already concluded with Germany and Japan.

Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon official now at the American Enterprise Institute, sees these constraints as an opportunity: "We've known for a long time that we don't want to trade $6 million interceptors against $1,000 drones. I think we now have more focus on this solution, and more people working to build less expensive systems."

On the Iranian side, the situation is considered far more critical. Jason Brodsky, policy director for the organization United Against Nuclear Iran, believes that Tehran's capacity to produce missiles, drones, and other weapons systems "on a large scale" has been "largely destroyed." Remaining stockpiles are reportedly concentrated on the threat to the Strait of Hormuz, which Brodsky describes as a declining asset. "The Iranian regime is running out of time," he says.

White House Press Secretary Anna Kelly asserted that the United States had "more than enough ammunition" to achieve all of the president's strategic objectives, while specifying that Trump continued to urge defense contractors to increase production. The summit held at the U.S. Army War College in early July, attended by the CEOs of major American arms manufacturers, illustrates this urgency. "We have the best quality in the world," Trump had declared. "But we need a little more speed."