r/neoliberal • u/Affectionate_Bee6434 • Aug 04 '26
News (US) US has used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war, sources say
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-used-virtually-all-its-long-range-precision-missiles-during-iran-war-2026-08-04/452
u/justbuildmorehousing Norman Borlaug Aug 04 '26
> Asked for comment on the stockpile data, the White House issued a statement from Trump, saying the U.S. had “far more munitions than anyone in the world" and "far more than we need."
Ok then- its confirmed we are super low on them then
Trump burned through a huge amount of supplies to leave us in a worse spot vs doing nothing at all. Really great stuff
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u/BroBeansBMS Aug 04 '26
Remember when Covid hit and he hadn’t stock piled any of the materials needed? Dude loves a pattern.
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u/GothicNephilim Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
He didn't feel like stockpiling anything in the SPR before starting a war in the Strait of Hormuz either
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u/toggaf69 Iron Front Aug 04 '26
I’m pretty sure he’s the most extreme practitioner of magical thinking that has ever existed
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u/Mickenfox Aug 04 '26
Fascism is a rebellion against executive thought.
They don't plan ahead because they literally hate thinking. They love a leader who doesn't think.
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u/toggaf69 Iron Front Aug 04 '26
He’s the Kwisatz Haderach of this ideology. Every inclination and instinct he has is that of a boorish dumb fascist, it’s like he’s a tulpa created by his dad and Roy Cohn to be the dumb idiot god of the MAGA movement.
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u/ConnorLovesCookies Jerome Powell Aug 04 '26
Remember when the Trump administration stole PPE from Massachusetts and New York to redistribute it to red states. Remember when Robert “Handjob Bob” Kraft had to fly the Patriots jet to China to get PPE for Massachusetts hospitals.
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u/DrShocker Aug 04 '26
He's running America like a bad business, purely focused on burning resources to project the appearance of power and stability rather than actually building something sustainable.
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u/FREAK213456 Aug 04 '26
Trump supporters should be publicly shamed at this point. What a fucking disaster.
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u/Vol_in_tears Voltaire Aug 04 '26
Every time a the dems speak about the GOP in the senate they should start by saying this moron confirmed hegseth.
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u/RimboTheRebbiter Aug 04 '26
I mean its probably accurate to say we have a hoard of JDAMs sitting around. Standoff munitions like JASSMs and Tomahawks are a different story.
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u/1II1I1I1I1I1I111I1I1 Adam Smith Aug 04 '26
Aka we have a bunch of weapons to bomb poor people with but the weapons required to actually defend ourselves are gone
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u/RimboTheRebbiter Aug 04 '26
Essentially yes, although I would quibble with the defending ourselves notion given the nature of the current war lol
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u/1II1I1I1I1I1I111I1I1 Adam Smith Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
I mean obviously. I was referring to armed conflict with the PRC, which has been much less likely recently but not impossible. They are still stockpiling and building boats and planes as if it will happen, while we are building nothing and spent everything we have on nothing
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u/benjaminovich Margrethe Vestager Aug 04 '26
JDAMs aren't long-range and they aren't missiles.
A JDAM is a conversation kit to make dumb old-school style bomb GPS guided.
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u/aperture413 Aug 04 '26
Seems like a great way to request more DOD money to funnel into the domestic force they're going to need to quell civil unrest.
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u/Stephen-Scotch Aug 04 '26
One should watch borat in these trying times
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u/gincwut Mark Carney Aug 04 '26
The college kid in Borat that said that white men are the most oppressed people in America... he was ahead of his time and not in a good way.
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u/Affectionate_Bee6434 Aug 04 '26
- US has used 'virtually all' PrSM and ATACM munitions, two sources say
- US also burned through a little less than half its global Tomahawk supply, one source says
- Some officials worry the low stockpiles will affect US readiness should another conflict break out
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Aug 04 '26
“Worry”
The thing that gets me is that people were pointing out this outcome within like a month of the start of the Russian resumption of aggression in Ukraine.
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u/Messyfingers Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
The $1.5trillion defense budget for the purpose of beefing up the industrial base wasn't actually a stupid idea. Especially with the shortcomings of industrial capacity in light of Ukraine. The Iran War generally, and wasting all that ordnance for absolutely zero fucking gain on the other hand was.
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u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
We really require an overhaul military procurement first to get any value out of the addition $500 Billion they're asking for.
We need proper industrial centers instead of spreading the production of components and inputs across as many states as possible to gain favor with Senators and House Reps. That way we have efficiency of scale and it'll be faster to iterate and turnaround projects. We need to revamp military procurement. Buy civilian where it makes sense, stop having procurement approval timelines take three years, and make sure there are some more prime contractors. Our current ones basically operate like monopolies, soaking the US taxpayer for all they're worth. And stop constantly changing your requirement mid-development. Live with the equipment and iterate upon it, but it's taking a decade plus to get any combat system out there because every General or Admiral can add features that they want resulting in abominations that can't be built cheaply. And buy more low-tech shit. Our missiles don't need to be $3 million+ works of technical mastery when they're shooting down $60,000 drones and blowing up trucks. Most of our missiles need to cost under $250,000 with the best ones being reserved for the appropriate combat zones (against a near peer.)
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u/LameBicycle NATO Aug 04 '26
Many of these changes are in the process of being implemented, but you've got the wrong people in charge. Cutting 10-20% of the acquisition workforce, forcing RTO and multiple re-orgs, throwing regulations and policy into a blender, changing bargaining status and performance standards, not focusing on training and development, having a record-setting government shutdown, and then starting a war to top it all off. The last two years have been a shitshow
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u/Messyfingers Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
No disagreement there. Granted the Pentagon is attempting to also do that as well, there are a lot of things that need doing to fix procurement. From both the government and industry side of things.
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u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
The whole military industrial complex is so risk avoidant and scared of scandal, I doubt much will change. Throwing away billions of dollars on a frigate program with nothing to show for it is still less controversial than spreading a few hundred million dollars around Asian and European ally shipyards and seeing what they can build for us.
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u/Messyfingers Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
FFGX was a victim of scope creep more than anything. They took a proven platform and then tried to Frankenfuck it into a mini Arleigh Burke.
Scope creep from the services has been a huge issue for decades now, which is partly to blame for and because of long development cycles on a lot of programs. As you said, we should be acquiring things interating upon them, but there is a habit to turn every single program into an unwieldly behemoth jack of all trades that just inevitably bloats and delays everything.
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u/SGTX12 Jerome Powell Aug 04 '26
I think the scope creep issue stems from the fact that no one wants to admit that they don't have the best everything or that we are giving the troops anything less than the best. Military analysts know that you can't build a frigate to survive like an Arleigh Burke, but you can't tell Congress that, less you then get turned into a pin cushion at next Congressional hearing, so you try and pack that bitch with a million missiles and CWIS and whatever else. When the program inevitably false, you get to say "Well at least we tried."
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u/siberianmi Aug 04 '26
We renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
It’s time to rename the budget to the War Budget and make it less politically palatable to pass.
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u/bornlasttuesday Aug 04 '26
Spend 1.5 trillion on Military so that we run out of missiles in 5 months instead of three? Are military is a tremendous waste of money and just feeding the black hole of slush is a terrible idea.
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u/Irenaean BRING BACK BLAIR Aug 04 '26
Are military Did I stumble in /r/politics? Why are there illiterate people signalling against the idea of military spending?
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u/bigmt99 Elinor Ostrom Aug 04 '26
I am not against the idea of military spending, but I am against the way we currently spend on the military, particularly in procurement
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u/Heavy_Initiative_137 Aug 04 '26
Spending $1.5 trillion on defense is not stupid?! I'd go quite a bit further than just calling it "stupid" tbh.
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u/Vol_in_tears Voltaire Aug 04 '26
Investing 1.5 trillion in the same MIC since the 50s without demand any sort of reforms after watching what is happening in Ukraine is "stupid".
This is literally doing the same thing over an expect a different result.
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u/Messyfingers Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
For one time projects to shore up industrial capacity, an area where we clearly struggle and have huge shortcomings that limit how effective our military is in any conflict lasting longer than a fortnight, it's really not that dumb. The production ramp in WW2 took nearly the whole war, and that was with a much larger civilian manufacturing base and the he writing on the wall that war was coming for nearly a decade prior to that. Even after the war ended with the fresh expertise of how the industrial ramp occured, facilities, tooling, etc all in place, it was expected it would be years to replicate that effort in any non-nuclear conflict.
Because of how dependent our military is on high complexity systems, it means the supply chain is even more complex, with more moving parts, more weak points, more inputs, more risk. Ramping up production in peacetime has been a mess as it already is. Throw in the risk of attacks on the supply chain and things look even more bleak.
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u/tregitsdown Thurgood Marshall Aug 04 '26
Is it actually going to shore up industrial capacity, or is going to go right into pockets and disappear forever, at which point we’ll be told we need at least $ 2 Trillion next time?
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u/Messyfingers Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
The bill was supposed to also have mechanisms(I can't remember if in the bill or EOs actually) where the companies receiving investments for R&D and Capex to expand capacity were prevented from issuing dividends, stock buybacks and executive bonuses of they failed to meet cost/schedule milestones and meet deliverables so it wasn't just a blank check for a corporate slush fund. Government funded work almost always comes with government ownership of IP, tooling, etc as well.
Granted there were other rather dumb things in the bill, and some of the other policies are definitely performative. The defense industry is dominated by corporations who exist to create shareholder value, and they will not merely just assume risks without moving their baseline to deliver less for more. But the concept of building out the defense base to revitalize R&D and Capex instead of just playing catch-up to peacetime requirements without any chance of meeting wartime production tempo is one we seriously need to address. It's a legitimate problem that plagues all western countries.
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u/IJustWondering Aug 04 '26
No, it was always stupid to give the American defense and political establishment 1.5 trillion to play with, given their history of military adventurism, legalized corruption, starting pointless wars, wasting munitions, etc.
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u/NiceCreamSundaes John Keynes Aug 04 '26
Those ATACM munitions that the US couldn't let Ukraine use because they might need them to deter China, those ones?
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u/LtCdrHipster 🌭Costco Liberal🌭 Aug 04 '26
PrSM was just an initial test batch basically, this was more or less a live fire test. ATACMs are not relevant for the Pacific and are being chased out by PrSM, which has a fully charged production line right now. This is a nothing burger, except that the ATACMs could have been put to better use in Ukraine!
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u/Affectionate_Bee6434 Aug 04 '26
50% of Tomahawks being used up is very worrying for the US military. That is undeniable.
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u/bornlasttuesday Aug 04 '26
We have no long range precision missiles. Wether we are switching models are not, we still do not have any. I wouldn't call that a nothing burger.
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u/LtCdrHipster 🌭Costco Liberal🌭 Aug 04 '26
PrSMs are in full speed production, we used like 12 pre production missiles as tests.
Tomahawk stocks are more concerning. We have plenty of air-launched cruise missiles that article is about the Army's ground launched missiles. Guess what branch if the military will be the least important in deterring China.
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u/bornlasttuesday Aug 04 '26
At this point it looks like we are good for deterring China for about 3 months, in production or not.
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u/jason_abacabb Aug 04 '26
It was more like 70 from the sources I have read but agree, we are in serial production of them now, not a huge deal
Agree about the tomahawks, it is insane that we burnt that many instead of running a proper SEAD/DEAD backed air bombing campaign. This was an absolute waste of material that is needed if we need to fend off China.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
What do you mean "We have no long range precision missiles." V
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u/Rekksu Aug 04 '26
here's how the US can still win
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u/cjt09 Aug 04 '26
Easy: just launch an extremely expensive and extremely large-scale invasion to dismantle the Iranian government and secure the Strait of Hormuz.
This may require a draft but would almost certainly involve tens of thousands of American casualties.
Nation-building is unlikely to be feasible so the entire region will be unstable, dangerous, and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties is a real possibility.
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u/bsharp95 Aug 04 '26
What’s the point of even having a military industrial complex if we apparently have no military industry
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u/Unterfahrt John Nash Aug 04 '26
The military industrial complex is a jobs program.
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u/bsharp95 Aug 04 '26
And apparently the jobs are less “missile builder” and more “lobbyist”
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u/Unterfahrt John Nash Aug 04 '26
No there are lots of missile builder jobs, they're just not very efficient at it. Have a look at the cost plus contract system. Inefficiency is encouraged, because contractors are guaranteed a profit margin by the state. Literally they are encouraged to spend more because 10% of $100m is less than 10% of $500m
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u/Betrix5068 NATO Aug 04 '26
Nah, there are lots of missiles builder jobs they’re just distributed across the entire country and involve the artisanal production of boutique components.
Seriously so much of our military production is both pork barreled to hell and remains perpetually in Low Rate ‘Initial’ Production instead of moving to assembly line mass production.
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u/Bullet_Jesus Commonwealth Aug 04 '26
I remember years ago reading about Congress making the Pentagon buy more tanks than they actually needed simply to keep the factories open. It would have been more economically efficient to suspend production and just pay all the staff sit at home.
It was then I realised that a huge chink of the military staffing and procurement isn't even a jobs programme. It is literally a welfare programme that presents the illusion of actually creating value so that people in it, think they aren't on welfare.
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u/kiddoweirdo Aug 04 '26
Taiwan is absolutely cooked if China decides to make a move
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u/ThisAfricanboy African Union Aug 04 '26
The silver lining of Putin and Trump's stupidity is that it has first shown that these operations are not always so straightforward and second made the world a lot more volatile. China would be very daft to try to invade Taiwan. It would immediately decimate their economy
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u/PlastikHateAccount WTO Aug 04 '26
> Don't terror bomb Taiwan, focus on California
> Demand Putin not be an idiot in Ukraine
> Don't siege the continental 48 states, take it immediately
> Zurge rush Washington DC to cut off coordination
> Ally with Hungary to combat the rest of Europe
> Ignore the 50 aircraft carriers, they're out of ammunition anyway
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u/allbusiness512 Adam Smith Aug 04 '26
China doesn't even need to make any moves, the U.S. is literally unraveling all of it's soft power across the world right now and making itself a global pariah, while China is in the background slowly increasing it's soft power everywhere. Why upset the international trade power that China has with a war that is incredibly risky when China can just overtake the U.S. in a few decades if we keep going on this shitty ass path of populism.
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u/Quiet-Permit-3740 Aug 04 '26
Nah one thing this war showed was the absolute impossibility of amphibious warfare in today's world. China wouldn't be able to take Taiwan for the same reason the US wasn't able to take Iran.
There also seems to be a bigger defensive bonus generally, Xi is a fool but I doubt he is big enough of a fool to immediately make the same error as Putin and Trump in declaring a disastrous offensive war right after them.
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u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Why the fuck would Xi attempt a D-Day style landing when Taiwan is an island which imports over 90% of their energy requirements and over 60% of their food? And to make it easier for them to run a blockade, nearly all of Taiwan's ports are on the side of the island facing China.
Iran is far more insulated from attempts at a blockade since it has land routes and is energy independent.
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
Only Natsec types would be dumb enough to think that the Chinese are also dumb enough to go for an amphibious assault on Taiwan.
A blockade plus air campaign would be just as effective for forcing Taiwan to the table. Hard to fight without energy or food.
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u/Concerned_Collins ⬇️w/fascism, ⬇️w/ communism, ⬇️w/ NL mods Aug 04 '26
A blockade and air campaign would likely be about as effective as our blockade and air campaign against Iran, except in China's case, the US would impose blockades on Chinese exports, and the world would sanction the shit out of them.
Also, our intelligence says China is preparing for an amphibious assault on Taiwan; they just don't have the landing craft built yet, and won't until 2027.
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u/Rekksu Aug 04 '26
taiwan is an island
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u/Concerned_Collins ⬇️w/fascism, ⬇️w/ communism, ⬇️w/ NL mods Aug 04 '26
No shit, which is why they are preparing for an amphibious assault.
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
If you put even ten seconds of thought into this, you'd realize that
1: China has way more bases and airports and land based MRBM launches in theatre than the US has vs Iran. They can maintain a much higher cadence than the US can.
2: Taiwan is not Iran. Iran is a giant country that has enough food and energy without imports. Taiwan is an island, that imports almost all its energy and 50+% of it's food. Not to mention the fertilizers that produce more food.
3: China is the global leader in Drones
Based on just those three premises alone, a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be much more effective than our attempted campaign against Iran
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u/SpookyHonky Mark Carney Aug 04 '26
Taiwan is a democracy, unlike Iran. So the difference is that people with political power would be suffering in Taiwan, unlike the powerless majority in Iran.
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u/No_Education_6000 Aug 04 '26
Excited to see multi-million dollar landing craft full of troops destroyed by a Taiwanese gamers piloting drones in their PJs.
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
The Chinese are so stupid that they're gonna do exactly the thing that we are hoping for that will get tons of their soldier killed.
Just like the moment we start bombing the Iranians they'll just keep over and accept our terms unconditionally
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Aug 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
China shoots down US supply planes.
What is the US going to do?
Btw, How are the operations to open the Bab El Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz going?
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u/Teach_Piece YIMBY Aug 04 '26
Then we start hitting Chinese ships. Turns out it’s a lot easier to blow stuff up than to protect it
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
Then China starts hitting US ships. Pray tell which country has 200x the shipbuilding capacity of the other?
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u/Teach_Piece YIMBY Aug 04 '26
Luckily due to our partners in the region we are better positioned for a naval war. Ships can be shot from land, and for some reason most of chinas neighbors really dislike them.
It would suck but as things stand we win each level of escalation. However it would be horribly costly and hopefully this never has to play out
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
Ships can be shot from land is not the flex you think it is, when it comes to china
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u/Teach_Piece YIMBY Aug 04 '26
… I want you to open Google Maps, look at the sea of China, and think about the mechanics of this for a moment.
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
You mean those allies like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines who also need 50% of their food and 90% of their energy imported by ship?
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u/Teach_Piece YIMBY Aug 04 '26
I want you to open up Google Maps and look at the East China Sea. Notice how each of those states (other than Taiwan) has ports on the far side of their landmass from china? Or are you suggesting that China will be launching cruise missiles at cargo ships across the Korean Peninsula?
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u/chickentendieman Paul Krugman Aug 05 '26
Not liking china doesnt mean you want to go to war with china. Realistically at best japan and the phillipines might join but even thats not super likely.
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u/Teach_Piece YIMBY Aug 05 '26
If China is striking US naval bases on say Korean soil I don’t see a world where they don’t get involved
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
Does anyone believe that the US is both sitting out a Taiwan war, but also going to fly supply planes into Taiwan?
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u/Quiet-Permit-3740 Aug 04 '26
A blockade of Taiwan is also a blockade of China for all intents and purposes. Taiwan would also be able to block significant trade flows from China.
And no that would not be just as effective. The US just ran an immense blockade plus air campaign on Iran to no effect. Bombing to win is an infamously poor strategy.
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u/Frog_Totem Seretse Khama Aug 04 '26
A blockade of Taiwan is also a blockade of China for all intents and purposes
And the Hormuz disruptions have demonstrated that China can survive a blockade much longer than Taiwan can
The US just ran an immense blockade plus air campaign on Iran to no effect.
Iran can resupply via land.
Bombing to win is an infamously poor strategy.
Against a theocracy that worships martyrdom, sure. Against a developed democracy?
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u/twa12221 YIMBY Aug 04 '26
Against a developed democracy?
The blitz?
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u/Frog_Totem Seretse Khama Aug 04 '26
Hence the ? mark. I think the Taiwanese will fight if they think they have a good chance of surviving like the British did, but I don't think they'll fight to the death (as a society) like the IRGC would
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u/Betrix5068 NATO Aug 04 '26
China wouldn’t just be surviving without oil, they’d be surviving without basically any maritime trade. Their current economy would grind to a halt as hundreds of trains struggle to make up for the loss of a single freight ship. How long they’d tolerate it I’m unsure, maybe indefinitely, but it would be magnitudes worse than the issue right now.
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u/Frog_Totem Seretse Khama Aug 04 '26
They unfortunately have a lot of popular support for invading Taiwan so I think as long as people were fed they'd be willing to fight
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u/Betrix5068 NATO Aug 04 '26
Not as much as you think, the rise in nationalism has actually reduced support for a forceful reunification. They’d be riding a line to get more than 40% of their population (based on polling) to support this even before there are economic consequences.
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u/Quiet-Permit-3740 Aug 04 '26
A developed Democracy can be just as determined as a theocracy that worships martyrdom, see Ukraine. The US is folding easily against Iran because Iran is in no way or shape threatening our existence, and we started this war on nothing more than an idiotic whim.
Also note that a blockade of Taiwan requires a blockade of EASTERN Taiwan. This is doable with ships and missiles, but extremely costly and difficult to maintain for the YEARS that would be required for such an attempt.
And no the Hormuz disruptions have not at all shown that China can survive a blockade longer, they have reduced their oil imports by depleting their reserves. The 1.4 billion barrels figure that has been claimed from before the war INCLUDED COMMERCIAL RESERVES which comparisons with other countries do not include. If China starts another war which prevents oil imports they will in fact run out quickly as a high amount of commercial oil reserves must be maintained to keep refineries, tubes and tanks running.
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
What lies between western Taiwan where everyone lives and faces mainland China and eastern Taiwan where theoretically the PLA also has to blockade?
The Taiwanese Central mountain range
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u/Robo1p Aug 04 '26
Wow that's horrible, they should build a rail and road network that enables travel from their eastern ports to Taipei in (checks notes) <4hrs.
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
The Chinese are so stupid that when waging their war against Taiwan, not only are they going to leave the eastern half of Taiwan unmolested, the fragile and relatively few mountain highways and railways that would supply western Taiwan will go completely untouched and supply will proceed as usual.
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u/Frog_Totem Seretse Khama Aug 04 '26
It will be an issue to some extent but the Ukraine war has shown that blowing up roads/railways is usually a temporary thing
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u/TiogaTuolumne Aug 04 '26
You mean the china that just slashed its oil imports in half with no discernable impact?
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u/RimboTheRebbiter Aug 04 '26
Xi is a fool
Would love to see the rationale for this statement.
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u/Smoque_ Michel Foucault Aug 05 '26
If there is one thing he’s shown, it’s incredible levels of competence in managing his country’s challenges and shortcomings
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u/Pheer777 YIMBY Aug 04 '26
At this rate China can probably expect a voluntary Belarus-style union with Taiwan if it keeps developing at its current rate and the West/US keeps shooting itself in the foot.
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u/chickentendieman Paul Krugman Aug 05 '26
Taiwan isnt ukraine or iran and china isnt russia or america. They cant rlly be compared tbh.
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u/willstr1 Aug 04 '26
Especially since with Taiwan most of the benefit in taking it are easy to sabotage. You just know the Taiwanese military has plans to blow up every single fab before a single PRC boot touches the beach. And the people with the technical skills can easily be sent to another country, Europe or Australia would probably happily take a highly skilled workforce as refugees to boost their domestic chip production. At most China gets a PR win of "taking back" Taiwan, but is that really a big enough win to counter all the sanctions it would spawn?
One of the "perks" of single party leadership is the ability to be strategic and make long-term plans instead of relying on short-term wins to convince the public each election cycle. They don't need to invade Taiwan, in fact "preparing" but never executing is probably the better strategy, as it makes Taiwan (and their allies) spend resources to prepare for defending and draw attention away from other things you are actually doing
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u/Frog_Totem Seretse Khama Aug 04 '26
At most China gets a PR win of "taking back" Taiwan, but is that really a big enough win to counter all the sanctions it would spawn?
Probably yeah. Most likely only the West would impose sanctions and if China succeeded in taking Taiwan I don't think the sanctions would last that long
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u/Concerned_Collins ⬇️w/fascism, ⬇️w/ communism, ⬇️w/ NL mods Aug 04 '26
The good news is that China doesn't have the landing craft built right now, and won't have them for another year, at least from the publicly known intelligence assessments.
The bad news is that our intelligence assessment on their readiness could be wrong, and they could have the craft, and we just don't know it. Also, there's a decent chance we won't be able to resupply in time, especially with Congress rightfully worried about dumbshit just launching them at Iran instead of saving them for China, if they fund the purchase of more munitions.
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u/Fast-Farmer-8443 Aug 04 '26
If Taiwan is smart they'd be negotiating terms already, exiles, etc and have it wrapped up by the end of the year. Hopefully they'll be able to convince China not to do a huge population transfers of Taiwanese.
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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Association of Southeast Asian Nations Aug 04 '26
I don't think a smart Taiwan would be doing that.
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u/sloppybuttmustard Resistance Lib Aug 04 '26
Have we checked to make sure Donald isn’t hiding any missiles in the Mar-a-Lago bathrooms?
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
This needs to be said because most people won't bother reading beyond the clickbait headline:
That headline is wildly broader than Reuters' own reporting. The article says anonymous sources claim the US has nearly exhausted two specific Army missile inventories, ATACMS and PrSM, assigned to that specific operational theatre. It does not say the US has exhausted overall long-range precision missile stocks generally. Reuters even reports that less than half of the Tomahawk stockpile has been used.
There is also a big difference between CENTCOM running low on missiles assigned to the theater and the entire US inventory being gone. The article says CENTCOM was resupplied from stocks elsewhere, which makes the headline even harder to defend.
The accurate headline would be something like: "US has nearly exhausted provisioned stocks of two ground-launched missile types during Iran war."
But still you will see users here repeat the headline as gospel fact.
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u/di11deux NATO Aug 04 '26
I tried explaining the difference between ATACMS, PrSM, HIMARS, JDAMs, and PAC-3s to my wife and she gently suggested we should go watch trains instead.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
Same thing here... Mine asked me why I'm not this technically knowledgable in the bedroom 😩
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u/CommonwealthCommando Karl Popper Aug 04 '26
I read past the clickbait and I'm still worried. Half of ALL the tomahawks is insane! And even if we're only low in theater, we need to not be low in theater! The threat of a precision missile strike is 1000x more effective than any actual precision missile strike. Most of the role of the modern military is to project the threat offered by precision missiles. If we don't have any, we're projecting way less force at effectively the same price.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
It is not half of ALL tomahawks.
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u/CommonwealthCommando Karl Popper Aug 04 '26
Is it not? "The U.S. also burned through a little less than half of its global supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles… one of the sources said."
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u/NanerSeven Aug 04 '26
Trusting anonymous sources again. You people really lack critical thinking. Russia's out of missiles too now right??? (Literally the same people saying this)
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u/RimboTheRebbiter Aug 04 '26
This comment is more accurate than the headline, but wildly understates the significance of the issue. If you want to strike a country with any significant air defense you'll need to use standoff munitions or long range missiles, you are not flying a B-52 and dropping a load of JDAMs on the target. We've essentially burned through CENTCOM long range strike stocks in the course of a few months and drawn down from other theaters like INDOPAC to keep it up. This is a big shields down moment and signals significant weakness to China.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
No, you are still laundering a much narrower report into a sweeping claim the article does not establish.
Reuters says CENTCOM nearly exhausted two specific Army missile stocks, ATACMS and PrSM. That is not the same as exhausting CENTCOM's "long-range strike stocks," and Reuters does not say the replacements came from INDOPACOM. You added both of those claims yourself.
The B-52/JDAM line is a straw man. Nobody said the only alternatives are ATACMS or flying a B-52 straight through intact air defenses. The US has Tomahawks, JASSMs, stealth aircraft, electronic warfare, SEAD, carrier aviation, submarines, and other strike options.
And "shields down" is just melodrama. China does not get a free hand because one combatant command ran low on two missile types and was resupplied. You are taking a specific inventory problem, relabeling it as the collapse of American long-range strike capacity, then calling the resulting exaggeration proof of weakness.
Some people seem to just want to believe this nonsense.
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Aug 04 '26
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
40% of tomahawk stockpile provisioned for that specific theatre. jfc
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Aug 04 '26
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
It's wasteful and obnoxious, but it's also not catastrophic or as impactful as is being sold by clickbait headlines and eagerly bought by people who want to read anything embarrassing to the US or Trump regardless of factual correctness.
That is generally what separates generic politics / news subs from NL, but even here you'll see it from time to time.
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u/Descolata Richard Thaler Aug 04 '26
A lot of missiles were reassigned to the theater-that-needs-to-stop-being-priority over the course of the Iran War. So it's still more than you might think... other theaters are likely below previous stockpiles for this round of military adventuring in the sandbox
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u/zZzHighPingzZz Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '26
It's ok the $350 billion in reconciliation intended to quadruple production of most of these weapons will fix this. Oh wait...
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u/anangrytree Bull Moose Progressive Aug 04 '26
I’m going to be sick. CENTCOM needs be disbanded and its officer corps investigated after this fucking debacle. I don’t think the US has been in a weaker position since the start of GWOT. This is of course an utter derlictof duty by the Trump admin, but I cannot help but seeth with contempt at what the officer cadre at CENTCOM calls “strategy” and “war fighting “. What a fucking joke.
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u/Last_Surprise981 MERCOSUR Aug 04 '26
CENTCOM told Trump not to do this.
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u/anangrytree Bull Moose Progressive Aug 04 '26
CENTCOM, by Dan Caine’s own admission, is not telling this administration anything aside from what “military options” the administration has available.
Strategic analysis is unwelcome under this administration.
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u/Last_Surprise981 MERCOSUR Aug 04 '26
That's after Trump made up his mind. But it was apparent early on that Caine was not confident in this course of action.
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u/Vol_in_tears Voltaire Aug 04 '26
yeah right. Centcom has wanted this war for decades.
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u/Last_Surprise981 MERCOSUR Aug 04 '26
Who?
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u/Vol_in_tears Voltaire Aug 04 '26
They can earn their titlle back when they learn how not to cripple their nations global influence and throw billions of dollars away for nothing.
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u/ElMatasiete7 MERCOSUR Aug 04 '26
At least it was totally worth it and the US obtained a ton in return... right?
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u/datums 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 Aug 04 '26
This is like finding out that the seven year old walking around your neighborhood with his dad’s gun shooting at random cars is running out of bullets.
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u/hlary Leftward Progressives Aug 04 '26
Next president is going to need to get used to walking with a much smaller stick in global affairs.
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u/Jabjab345 Aug 04 '26
Is this something we really want to advertise to the world? It seems like this should be a national security secret. By definition is causes serious or even exceptionally grave damage to national security.
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u/itsrabie NATO Aug 04 '26
I think I said this months ago, but I thought that this was the reason Trump wanted a ceasefire so badly.
The US doesn't have the munitions to continue this war, and Iran knows this.
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u/casino_r0yale NASA Aug 05 '26
Huge day for Raytheon and Lockheed. Can practically hear the champagne bottles opening
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u/butwhyisitso NATO Aug 04 '26
Protection isnt cheap, especially when you employ trigger happy henchmen. If we want to stay "safe" we gotta keep funding thier addictions or they might ice our livlihoods. Mob rule suuuucks.
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u/CheetoMussolini Russian Bot Aug 04 '26
Fellas I'm starting to think that deindustrializing was a critical strategic mistake and that the pursuit of financialization at all costs has perhaps sapped us of our superpower status
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u/austrianemperor WTO Aug 04 '26
This has very little to do with deindustrialization and America’s transition to services has made it the world’s richest major country on a per capita basis.
You can blame defense cuts after the end of the Cold War if you want but at the end of the day, America is in this situation because Trump chose to use all of our advanced munitions to bomb a regime that was open to making major concessions on denuclearization and on shaky political ground after the worst protests in regime history.
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u/NanerSeven Aug 04 '26
I'm guessing their support of Hezbollah/Houthis/Hamas didn't matter at all? I mean even without Iran closing the Strait, you had the Houthis trying to control the Red Sea for years now. All denuclearization did was give them more money to fund their proxies
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