>The U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military’s readiness for future conflicts.
>The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two of the sources.
That quite a bit less of an issue than the headline implies.
PrSM has been in production for only a short time, and ATACMS stocks were never high. Neither of these are the backbone of US long-range precision strike weapons. Article is misleading.
It IS an issue if stand-off war is your only war, and it seems to be the exclusive approach here. If you run out of long-range precision weapons, what do you have left? Boots on the ground? That's not going to happen, and that means you will never win this on and off war.
The USAF has a pretty substantial inventory of stand-off weapons, and an absolutely enormous inventory of guided bombs.
They do, but the current leadership does not have any appetite for entering Iran's airspace after the last downing drama. If Iran captures a pilot, there is going to be no more room for market manipulation.
They want this problem to be solved. So you spend the munitions, forcing the manufacturing problem to get fixed. This works in favor of Anduril, which cares about manufacturing scalability
Never high and a significant number were donated to ukraine specifically because a ground launched pgm has never been a high priority for the US since the USAF exists.
No PrSM were donated to Ukraine, and only a small number of legacy ATACMS were delivered. Under 200 from open sources...
> That quite a bit less of an issue than the headline implies.
Here's a point that I ran across: these long range missiles are there to take out air defences and such (along with stealth sorties), which allows you go go in with 'regular' ordinance and non-stealth aircraft—of which there is much higher quantities and availability—in later phases.
In the early phases of the conflict you use stand-off munitions to reduce the chances of people being captured or killed.
Because Trump doesn't really have approval for this escapade (from either Congress or public opinion) these 'fancy' munitions are the ones primary being used to reduce the risk of casualties.
Now, trying to reduce casualties is not a bad thing per se, but the trade-off is that the fancy stuff is more expensive and takes longer to (re-)build-up. And what if there are other conflicts that flare up where these munitions would be useful? If they're not available do you start using piloted aircraft?
>Here's a point that I ran across: these long range missiles are there to take out air defences and such (along with stealth sorties), which allows you go go in with 'regular' ordinance and non-stealth aircraft—of which there is much higher quantities and availability—in later phases.
Not ATACMS. SEAD is an Air Force/Navy activity.
ATACMS and PrSM would definitely be used to strike air defense systems. The US military is very joint and the boundary you're delineating isn't part of the mission tasking.
Sure, it's possible in theory. In reality, the army has other priorities.
You’re giving trump a lot of credit that you think he’s capable of thinking of second order effects of his actions.
Two birds with one stone for benefit of Putin.
Likely son of Ayatollah wanted to get rid of his weak father and Putin wanted the US to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. So Putin asked Krasnov to get rid of Ayatollah and empty the stockpile of weapons.
Trump always delivers for Russia.
I don’t know if I am convinced. Russia also uses a lot of Iranian drones, which presumably are going to have supply troubles because of this war.
OTOH reducing the supply raises the price of oil and thereby allows Russia to charge more for their main product of export. At the start of the war Trump reduced Russian oil sanctions[1]. Trump is also collecting all the money from Venezuelan oil sales[2].
1. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/trump-eases-russian-oil...
2. https://newrepublic.com/post/213566/trump-hoarding-billions-...