Is America Running Out Of Missiles?

Dana Ishrat Mahmud

The question of the US missile inventory is becoming serious. President Donald Trump has reportedly clashed with his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, over the matter, and it may have been a factor in his decision over the weekend to call off a massive campaign of strikes against Iran, though this is denied by the White House.

As we shall see, this is a problem for the whole world. It is not too much to argue, for instance, that America’s missile arsenal is a major factor preventing Putin from going nuclear in Ukraine. One of the most important weapons is the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, which is fired from US warships against targets ashore up to 1,500 miles away. 

The US had a little over 3,000 Tomahawks left at the start of the current Iran war: it has since fired around 1,000 of these. Another key weapon is the Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Munition (JASSM). JASSMs are launched from US aircraft against ground targets which can be more than 500 miles away. The US had around 4,000 JASSMs left at the start of the Iran war, and it is thought to have used more than 1,000.

Tomahawks and JASSMs are important because they allow the US to strike targets which lie within enemy air defences without needing to send manned aircraft or ships into danger. Everyone in NATO, then, should care about how many Tomahawks and JASSMs the US can muster.  Unfortunately, risk from enemy air defences can never be eliminated.

As the crew of a US Strike Eagle found out in April when their jet was hit, and they were forced to parachute into Iran, US special-operations forces did manage to recover both airmen safely without losses, but the rescue involved no fewer than 155 aircraft; a further US jet was shot down while providing covering fire; helicopters were hit by ground fire. Two large C-130 transport planes had to be abandoned and blown up on the ground in Iran, as they could not be flown out again. At one point, a hundred special-ops troops were stranded on the ground with no evacuation option. 

So far from the experience of last year’s 12-Day War, when US and Israeli planes appeared to enter Iranian airspace at will, President Trump will nowadays be keen to keep manned flights over Iran to the very minimum. Unfortunately, if he still wants to mount massive strikes on Iran.

That means his only option is the finite stocks of Tomahawks and JASSMs, which at the moment are replaced at an annual rate of just a few hundred. Production is being ramped up, and cheaper alternatives are on the way, but that will take years. In the meantime, the world can only watch nervously as US long-range missile stocks dwindle.

Source: The Telegraph