By Mackenzie Eaglen
Monday, May 11, 2026
Every recent U.S. military operation has prompted very
public warnings about America’s dwindling munitions to prosecute it. Epic Fury in Iran, Atlantic Resolve in support of Ukraine, Prosperity Guardian
or Rough Rider in the Red Sea against the Houthis, Midnight
Hammer against Iran previously, or the ongoing defense of
Israel—these operations share a common denominator of the United States running
low on key precision stocks quickly after launch.
Not all things that blow up serve the same purpose.
Missiles, bombs, rockets, ammunition, and mines do not possess equal
capability. While the U.S. military has plentiful supply of legacy
munitions—older, unguided artillery rounds and conventional bombs—it is
alarmingly bare on exquisite weapons. While abundant, those legacy
stocks underperform against sophisticated adversaries armed with high-tech
weaponry.
America’s enemies have spent three and a half decades
studying our ways of warfare and have developed explicit counterweapons, training, and sheer production
capacity to beat us. China alone commands the world’s largest navy (and army, and air force, and
coast guard, and maritime militia, and sub-strategic missiles force) and could
deplete American magazine depth within days of conflict.
Meanwhile, America’s conventional and strategic forces
are both at a readiness nadir amid a generational modernization effort and
nonstop intensive overseas missions. Credible institutions and war colleges all
come to the same war-gamed conclusions: The U.S. military
consistently runs out of critical long-range weapons within the first weeks of
a major war. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Hal Brands has warned, without immediate investment, America can “get
ready for ‘missile famine’ if there is a great-power war.”
Operation Epic Fury offers a real-world preview of
exactly that scenario. The American military reportedly fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles over a few weeks, even
though this weapon is built at a rate of just 90 to 100 units per year. Absent acceleration, replenishing
this key armament from one short but intense operation would take roughly 10 years.
And the offensive munitions shelf is only half of the
problem.
Stocks of defensive weapons protecting our troops or
territory, such as the Patriot interceptors or THAAD missile defense system,
are running either very low or nearly empty. Since 2021, we have produced
around three dozen or fewer THAAD interceptors per year, but fired off 150 during last summer’s 12-Day War against Iran.
On the current schedule it would take three-and-a-half years to replace
what was fired in just under two weeks. As for the critical Patriot
interceptor, relied on by militaries around the world, the Pentagon used more than 1,200 against Iran in Epic Fury. While the Army
hopes to order 2,798 PAC-3 missiles with the pending budget request, those
funded in the annual base budget won’t begin delivery until May 2029.
Such high expenditure rates in such a short time expose a
problem that has taken decades to cement. America would be dangerously outgunned,
if not empty-handed, in a long war with Beijing.
Even if a potential war in Asia is years away, the
acceleration of effort to rebuild stockpiles is slow and the enemy is not
standing still. Procurement lead times are measured not in weeks or in months
but in years. The popular precision strike missile (or PrSM), also heavily used
against Iran, has a construction timeline of 36 months. The Tomahawk’s build time averages 26 months.
In all these cases, the long build cycles offset plans to order munitions in
large quantities. That leaves the U.S. military to supplement what it does not
have with what it does—a plethora of old, cheap, non-precision weapons that
would fail to accomplish strategic goals in an environment such as the South
China Sea, where long-range precision strike capabilities are critical.
Thankfully, this is a solvable problem—but not in the
traditional Washington way. A wartime production surge to rebuild the industrial base and
boost manufacturing capacity is part of the answer. But it’s just as important
to rethink what America builds and how we build it—pursuing production with
intention, putting more key assets underground, and modifying what we already
possess.
In his first address to Congress, George Washington
exhorted policymakers to prioritize a robust national defense, exclaiming that
“to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving
peace.” But our shallow magazine depth has laid bare the fact that Washington
has allowed America’s defense industry to size and scale for just one war at a
time. Modern wars of mass precision, at range and at scale, are proving long
and violent. They demand a primed industrial base, a large and ready force, and
a suite of statecraft tools in conflicts that merge economic defenses with
intelligence, cyber, space, and homeland defenses.
Superpowers don’t pivot.
Pentagon purchasing has long focused on the path of exquisite—that
is, top-tier equipment—optimization. Because the Defense Department has bought
so little since 1991, the armed services load every hope and dream onto the few
key weapons moving through the pipeline. Instead of building a high-low mix of
assets where some are more expendable than others, everything we buy and build
becomes the most capable, the longest range, and the most sophisticated or
technically complex. Such limited production forces suppliers to look for other
customers and workers to seek jobs in easier industries.
Given this break-glass-in-case-of-emergency moment,
America’s military needs weapons it can print by the thousands and lose by the
hundreds without breaking the budget. The Pentagon must ramp up its build-to-print model for munitions. America’s government
research labs have tremendous innovative ideas primed for production.
Outsourcing the key fabrication of parts while keeping design control in-house
will help yield tangible results sooner.
The military can also repurpose older weapons and
reimagine uses for legacy systems with modest modifications. The Hellfire
missile, originally designed
in the 1970s, had by the 2010s become a victim of its own success:
effective enough to keep ordering but too expensive to keep in surplus. By
redesigning the Hellfire’s warhead and guidance section into a modular
configuration, Lockheed Martin transformed the existing Hellfire airframes
into a substantially more effective asset for its replacement system. Weapons
that had been warehoused as second-tier munitions came back into inventory as first-tier ones.
More multiyear contracts can also be used to change the
defense industrial calculus, inviting traditional companies to invest in
capital expenditures and incentivizing startups to work with and for Uncle Sam.
Recent frameworks from prime contractors such as RTX prove
this model works after they have agreed to five landmark agreements to ramp
production and speed deliveries of Tomahawk cruise missiles, Standard Missiles,
and the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile. The White House’s pending 2027 defense budget request will help blow up demand and rebuild fragile supply chains if approved. For example,
requests for THAAD interceptors would jump from a diabolically low 37 units in
2026 to 857 units next year. That’s a legitimate step toward restocking our
empty bins.
America’s military can also learn from others under fire,
and iterate faster by emphasizing speed over perfect quality. At a recent
congressional hearing, witnesses described Ukraine’s acquisition culture
as focused on open designs and competition among vendors, where product changes
are made in days rather than years. Pentagon leaders have employed this model
with Operation Warp Speed in developing COVID vaccines and to build
mine-resistant vehicles at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As
Sen. Tim Sheehy noted, we still have “some of that DNA buried somewhere in the
five-sided building; let’s dig it up.”
Until our arsenal is rebuilt and restocked, a commercial
mindset to acquire technology rapidly and purchase off-the-shelf components
must reign supreme in government. A majority of the munitions mentioned above
are housed within the mandatory portion of the 2027 defense budget request.
This side of the ledger is key to making one-time injections at scale into the
munitions, shipbuilding, and drone industrial bases, accounting for surge
capacity.
If reconciliation does not become reality, the low
quantities requested in discretionary funds for 2027 will ensure America
remains the artisan of democracy and not the arsenal. Closing the munitions gap requires intellectual honesty
about what we have, what we need, and how to fix it. Purchasing mass quantities
of munitions and making investments into the industrial base is the right place
to start, but the road ahead is long and bumpy. Reversing a decades-long trend
of managed decline will not be easy, but it is necessary if America is to
maintain peace, which does not keep itself.
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