Iran war heats up while US weapon stocks remain depleted, risking military’s ability to fight future wars

By Davis Winkie, CNN

(CNN) — Key US weapons stockpiles remain significantly depleted and will come under even more intense pressure if strikes against Iran continue at the current rate, as President Donald Trump reiterated Friday that the ceasefire in the conflict is “over.”

The situation with armaments could impact the American military’s ability to fight a potential future war with China or even North Korea, experts told CNN.

“If the war continues at the rate it’s been going for the last [five] days … it would reduce stockpiles enough that there would be a new, higher level of risk … with the Indo-Pacific,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

The early phase of the Iran conflict, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, saw the US military expend thousands of key missiles used for long-range precision strikes and to defend against enemy air and missile attacks, according to analysts and previous CNN reporting.

Michael O’Hanlon, who leads foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution think tank, said there’s “no doubt” that stockpiles are “lower than we would prefer.”

By the time full-scale fighting between the US and Iran stopped in April, the Pentagon had fired at least half of its THAAD ballistic missile interceptors, nearly half of its Patriot air defense interceptors, and around 30% of its Tomahawk land-attack missiles, according to a CSIS analysis. CNN previously confirmed the accuracy of the analysis through three people familiar with internal Defense Department stockpile estimates.

The ceasefire offered a respite for the US stockpile as the low-intensity tit-for-tat strikes in subsequent months required fewer US missiles.

But replenishment rates are low for key missiles, Cancian said — according to current fiscal year delivery schedules, the Pentagon is receiving roughly 15 new Tomahawks and 20 new Patriot missiles per month. There are no THAAD deliveries forecast in 2026. CSIS estimated it would take three or more years to rebuild those inventories to pre-Iran war levels.

Elaine McCusker, an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow who previously served as the Pentagon’s deputy and acting comptroller, told CNN that the “timeline for replenishment of munitions for the most part will be measured in years — two-to-five for most.”

Defense acquisition expert John Ferrari, a retired Army two-star general also affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, highlighted that “not a single dollar has been appropriated by the Congress to replace a single missile” since the war began, leaving just the “normal, slow yearly peacetime process.”

In recent weeks, the White House formally requested supplemental funding from lawmakers to cover the costs of the Iran conflict (and some unrelated programs), but the measure faces a tough road through Congress.

A Pentagon official told CNN that the department is “committed to rapidly expanding the defense industrial base.” Trump invoked the Defense Production Act in June to remove regulatory red tape and speed missile production, and the Defense Department has inked deals with manufacturers to expand their production lines.

“The Department is aggressively pursuing and integrating the best of American innovation, wherever it resides, to deliver production at scale and drive resiliency across supply chains,” said the Pentagon official.

The Defense Production Act invocation is “helpful,” Cancian said, but “the impact will be small.” And expanding production capacity takes time.

Licensing agreements to allow other countries such as Germany and Ukraine to domestically produce Patriot interceptor missiles could also ease pressure on the US production lines amid rising global demand. Trump announced the license for Ukraine on Thursday while speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey.

But the agreements are slow-moving — Japan needed three years to build its Patriot factory, and Germany is yet to produce a Patriot missile despite starting work on their production line in 2022.

Other missile inventories, such as those for the Precision Strike Missile and the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, will be quicker to rebound and should reach their pre-war level by mid-to-late 2027, according to the CSIS analysis.

Cancian warned that a China conflict scenario isn’t the only potential risk that the Pentagon may face if it continues to expend key missiles at a high rate. Analysts believe war plans with North Korea call for a significant amount of US missiles, both to hit enemy targets and to defend US forces and Seoul from projected massive strikes by Pyongyang’s forces.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, in a statement identical to one provided to CNN in April, said that “America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing.”

“We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests,” Parnell said.

O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said he doesn’t believe the US military’s ability to deter Chinese or North Korean aggression “has suffered yet.”

But the expert cautioned that “at some point” deterrence could wane. “It’s probably unmeasurable and unknowable where that point might be, since it’s largely about an adversary’s psychology,” said O’Hanlon.

CNN’s Zachary Cohen and Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

Davis Winkie’s work at CNN is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). CNN retains full editorial control of the reporting.

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