Is the US Military Really Out of Ammo in Iran?

Experts warn the US military is in

danger of running out of critical

missiles. They claim US forces burned

through 50% of their arsenal in just a

few weeks of the war in Iran. The

American think tank CSIS warned that

it'll take between 2 and 5 years to

rebuild America's arsenal at this point.

Others claim that it'll take a decade.

But is that really the case? Public

estimates of weapon stockpiles in the

past have been wrong. It was widely

reported that Russia would run out of

missiles within 3 months of the start of

the war in Ukraine. This turned out to

be incorrect. The media claimed that

Iran was nearly out of missiles in 2025,

which also turned out to be wrong. I've

been lied to and hurt before in the

past. How can I trust you now when you

tell me that the US military, which

spends a trillion dollars on defense

each year, is running out of ammo? Sir,

how many tomahawks did we just fire?

Yes, Roger. Today, I thought it would be

interesting to look deeper at this

question. Why is it so hard to estimate

a country's classified weapon stockpile?

Whose job is it to make sure too many

missiles aren't fired? And is the US

really running out of ammo? The first

way to determine what's left in a

stockpile is by looking at the

Pentagon's own public estimates. The

Pentagon themselves reported that they

fired off a gigantic load, striking

13,000 Iranian targets in the war. But

how much of that was from the critical

munition stockpile? Multiple sources

state the US expended 850 Tomahawk

cruise missiles or about 30% of the

total stockpile. Over a thousand of the

long range joint air-to-s surface

standoff missiles Jasms were then fired

from fighter jets, roughly 20% of the

inventory. These munitions flew hundreds

of miles to blow up heavily defended

Iranian ballistic missile launchers deep

in the country. Once the skies were

safer from that initial standoff

strikes, then US forces reportedly

switched to dropping thousands of

relatively cheap JDAM bombs from F-15

bomb trucks with big dumpers. Jams are

typically launched from only 15 miles

away from their target. The Air Force

maintains a gigantic inventory of over

200,000 of these and they continue to

add 30,000 more per year. Okay, so those

aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

During the course of the Iran War,

Iranian forces fired thousands of drones

and missiles in order to defend against

that incoming fire. US warships and navy

shot off more than 20% of their critical

SM3 and SM6 interceptors. This photo

allegedly taken on board the USS Ford

aircraft carrier says that the closest

Iranian missile that got to the aircraft

carrier was about 15 miles away, too

close for comfort. Meanwhile, on the

ground, US forces shot off their Patriot

missile interceptors to defend seven

different countries in the Gulf. 1,400

of these were reportedly depleted, or

allegedly about 50% of the rounds. To

give you an idea of how intense the

initial fighting was, one new report

claims that an Iranian F5 fighter jet

bombed Camp Buring in Kuwait. Similar

burn rates were reported for the army's

precision strike missiles fired from

highar bad interceptors. But can

civilian experts, open- source

intelligence, and the media really know

these top secret classified numbers? And

what is their record of accuracy when it

comes to claiming inventories are low?

And we're going to get into all that in

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description and pin comment below. Back

to is the US military really running out

of ammo? Then in a report from

Bloomberg, they said that the vast

majority of the remaining 80% of

America's Jasm extended range air

launched missiles were just allocated to

the Middle East, leaving only around 400

remaining for the rest of the whole

world. Enough to last for 30 days to

defend Taiwan. But the real question is

whether or not this anonymous source

actually has classified access to the

full endtoend operational picture of

total ammo inventory for America or if

they're just speculating based on

numbers that they are actually familiar

with. Knowing a country's total weapon

stockpile is some of the world's most

closely guarded and valuable

information. In fact, Russia, China, and

the United States intelligence services

have poured millions of dollars over the

past few years into trying to figure out

each other's stockpiles and production

rates. We know this is the case because

of recently declassified intelligence

documents. Look at this sanitized top

secret assessment of China's growing

missile stockpile from 1971, closely

tracking their progress. I like how the

case officer here writing this report

kind of acknowledges how unsure they are

about the exact numbers saying quote

there might be 10 medium range ballistic

missiles may maybe not. These

assessments are built from multiple

different sources from spies to tracking

cargo trucks. However, getting these

kind of ammunition numbers as a civilian

in the media is a much bigger challenge.

Figuring out how many tanks, aircraft,

and troops an army has as a civilian is

much easier than determining how much

ammunition is on the shelf. This is

partly because ammunition cannot be seen

even with today's satellite images that

civilians can purchase. You cannot

purchase photos of classified US weapons

inventories off Craigslist and and if

you do, you might go to prison for it.

Ammo is stored in hidden covered

warehouses. They're not free balling it

out in open fields like main battle

tanks. It's buried deeply in forward

locations. It's spread out and

distributed to thousands of forward

bases and outposts around the world and

then thousands of separate units. Anyone

who's worked retail can appreciate how

much of a nightmare doing military

inventory is. The Pentagon doesn't make

this any easier to track for us. They do

not publish total inventories for key

munitions. Thanks a lot, Pentagon. They

rarely publish numbers of expended

munitions. The government does not

publish information on surge rate

production capacity. So, we're left with

guessing based on information cobbled

together from public contracts and

anonymous sources. Essentially, TMZ

levels of credit, but no, no, worse than

that. TMZ does some of the best open-

source intelligence reports on people

out there. The CIA should hire them. But

what about the anonymous sources

speaking to the press? A major challenge

with estimating weapon stockpiles, even