U.S. Races to Accomplish Iran Mission Before Munitions Run Out
wsj.com
wsj.com
Tinfoil hat time?
Which sort of oil are we talking about again?
This lets the current administration direct funding away from established military primes to their preferred vendors (i.e. political patronage).
To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year. There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.
The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025. Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.
Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany. World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans. The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.
Modern mechanized combat demands an insane manufacturing and logistics chain. It can burn through stockpiles incredibly fast, especially of high capability expensive munitions. War production levels are utterly unsustainable during peace time.
This is why peer and near-peer conflict is as much an economic and productive game as it is a military one. Shock and awe takes a tremendous amount of resources to accomplish at all, let alone sustain.
Warfighting and good grooming were said to be key.
Just a reminder that THAAD interceptor price is not due to material cost or difficulty to manufacture. Its approximately as expensive as gold per kilogram precisely because its made in such small numbers as part of a gold plated military contract.
Your whole comment I kept recalling "The Art of War" - which is of course, mostly about how not to go to war, how if you must go to war, it needs to be efficient, bc the war will decimate the State faster than the enemy ever could, but be really smart about it, bc not only is it incredibly expensive, you could also lose, and its very hard to recover from.
Best to avoid warring if you at all can - thousands of years later, still true.
The problem is, those decapitation attacks work when the institutions are weak or structured in a way that all the power is in the hands of one person. It's always funny to watch in Hollywood movies everybody scrambled to save the US president and the US president being extremeyly important. Even in real life Americans swear in a replacement ASAP when the president dies (i.e. Kennedy). That's very funny from European perspective, RIP to the guy but just elect someone else why you are making it a big deal?
Also, the wars in Europe all have stories about how soldiers pausing the fight one the frontlines and having a chat sharing meals exchanging cigarettes with the opponent etc.
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This is reminding us something that we should never have forgotten - modern war has an insatiable demand for munitions.
To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025.[1][2] We produce just under 100 per year.[3] There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.[4]
The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025.[5] Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.
Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany.[6][7] World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans.[8] The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.[9][10]
Modern mechanized combat demands an insane manufacturing and logistics chain. It can burn through stockpiles incredibly fast, especially of high capability expensive munitions. War production levels are utterly unsustainable during peace time.
This is why peer and near-peer conflict is as much an economic and productive game as it is a military one. Shock and awe takes a tremendous amount of resources to accomplish at all, let alone sustain.
*Sources:*
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/middleeast/us-thaad-missile-i...
[2] https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/us-army-rais...
[3] https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/lockheed-pentagon-ink-pl...
[4] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5713637-lockheed-martin-q...
[5] https://dronexl.co/2025/10/22/ukraine-deploys-9000-drones-da...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Crisis_of_1915
[7] https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/shells-cri...
[8] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13518046.2024.2...
[9] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA416944.pdf
[10] https://wp.oldmagazinearticles.com/magazine-articles/the-col...
Wouldn't it be to only launch cheap missiles / drones for a week or two to deplete interceptors and only then start using more advanced missiles ?
1. Bomb everything.
2. Bomb everything some more.
3. ?
4. Profit! Peace and democracy breaks out.
That seems unlikely.
It's tricky because the opposition don't have arms so it needs some of the guys who do to turn.
The US/Israel are being quite brutal though - killing all the regime leaders (as in youtube https://youtu.be/2TZF8_wwAUs?t=572)
On the other hand, exchanging an anti-US dictator for a US-aligned dictator is probably a lot better for the average citizen because your country won't be embargoed anymore, you just have to accept US oil companies on your territory.
If the US lacks the munitions to fight all of these conflicts, and is unreliable to allies or foes leads to a high likelihood of conflict.
Granted, patriot missiles are still manufactured across the alliance and I'm sure arms will be available for purchase.
So yes, China did give (note: sell) Iran some hardware, but it's not the most cutting edge tech China has, and it's not in sufficient quantity to make much of a difference.
The US is still ahead of China in a lot of military tech, even if the gap keeps getting narrower.
Combined with 25% youth unemployment things are looking more grim for China.
If any of this tech had any value it should have done something. Now people aren't even bashing it like they did in venezuela they just seem to be accepting that it is not worth talking about.
Like I said there is so much BS on both sides and well your argument isn't convincing: There is this cutting edge tech that no one has seen and no one knows anything about but just trust me China is saving it for the perfect moment. :/
>The US is still ahead of China in a lot of military tech, even if the gap keeps getting narrower.
We need to take a step back and reassess: is the hardware effective against the US or is it not? If it is not, then it is no better than a paperweight. Second place finishers are not with us any longer as the victor wrote the history books.
I'm starting to think maybe WW3 has already started and we are so bogged down in the day to day nonsense that many don't realize it yet.
Meanwhile PRC imports oil primarily for transport that can be electrified. They produce 5mbd domestically, which covers industrial use (petchem), which can also be derived from coal, discount RU/VZ/IR oil simply cheaper. Ironically if oil prices rise past $80 PRC coal to olefin becomes profitable, that's a PRC unique techstack, it only makes their industry more competitive vs others.
25% youth unemployment is western cope stat - broad PRC unemployment is like 6%, i.e. youth find jobs, PRC youth simply gets to fuckarounditis at home until they decide enter workforce later because high home ownership and household savings rate - something US youths with student loans and paycheck to paycheck culture can't do.
> cutting edge tech ... have done something
It's just boring anti stealth / anti air tech where science is reasonably well understood. Which cannot be provided to VZ/IR vs US overmatch. But what can be done is preposition them for intel gathering vs US, i.e. PRC stealth radars likely gather telemetry on US stealth / order of battle / EW even if VZ/IR cannot integrate them into shooters effectively vs US air. Doing something including passive collection on US using premier assets in real scenario. If anything like past CENTCOM drama, there's PRC Type 815A's chilling in CENTCOM right now hoovering up intelligence.
> effective against the US or is it not?
It likely is in volumes that negate US overmatch. There's a reason US/IL is trying to strangle IR's shit tier missile complex now - 12 days war and houthis have shown even garbage IR hardware is enough to simply overwhelm US+IL+co through densest ABM defense in the world, after PRC eastern theatre command. Everything we're seeing last couple years has basically validated PRC model once extrapolate scale to natural conclusions. Consider US vacated most of CENTCOM to avoid IR counter fire. PRC has magnitude more highend missiles, million+ drones, loitering munition for 1/2IC, is US going to bail Okinawa/Yokosuka/Busan etc vs PRC with more fires than US has produced interceptors, ever, how are US going defend 1IC security obligations if IR penetrating MENA with crippled/puny missile complex.
>effective against the US or is it not
As what was seen, see PRC tandem AShM tests a few years ago where they coordinated hypersonics launched from different sites to strike moving target at see, i.e. something US hasn't even demonstrated. What we see is US overmatch still effective against adversaries dramatically smaller with generations old hardware (because of course it is) but even those hardware, at limited scale is forcing US to adopt postures that would basically lead to defeat in westpac scenario. The fact that US has to preposition 1/3 of active fleet and airforce hardware for WEEKS vs minor adversaries fraction PRC size and fraction PRC tech/industrial output suggest US simply not capable of dealing PRC scale/tier adversary, that's without considering munition stockpile etc.
What people should think about is not how much US can stomp lighweight adversaries, but how much % of US force has to be committed to doing so.
Rural Chinese kids are getting shafted in every way possible. Most adults are there two days a month at best (basically almost all present adults are 50 or more), they are undereducated, and rural jobs pay a fifth to an eighth of what an unqualified factory job pays, and there isn't enough of them. It's probably a blip for Chinese employment numbers, but man, rural China seems harsher than rural Vietnam, at least for the new generations.
Yes historically very UNDERemployed, but at this point it's, and this will sound callous, matter of bootstraps, i.e. rural youth, despite having shittier education are more educated than their rural parents. AKA they are minimal competent to do migrant blue collar work - lots of well paying factory jobs if willing to relocate. But that also hard life style so many choose to not, because modern shit rural life is frequently not as laborious as shit migrant dormitory life.
It terms of stats, rural marginalization = contradictions.
Technically/theoretically rural employment is always 0%. Rural hukou = own small plot of farmland = by definition rural residence are bucketed as farmers. But in terms of useful stats, whatever their unemployment hardly matters because they make so little money, like the bottom 1-2 quantiles in PRC (predominantly rural) aggregates to like 5% of PRC GDP. It's a blip for PRC economic health, but urban/rural divide is irreconcilably unjust. Though also practically unjust especially for PRC demographic trends, TLDR rural is where most of the undereducated old are, it's going to be nice low cost dumping ground for retired people who wants to chill in their gardens.
4000 in stockpiles, they shot maybe couple hundred in one day. Could sustain for 2 weeks at this pace.
The Iraq war cost about $2T over a decade.
You could have about 10% subsidized healthcare, which I would obviously argue is better than pointless war killing tons of people.
But you couldn't just "have healthcare".
The United States military budget is now 1.5 trillion dollars per year.
We wouldn't need healthcare.
We'd just be dead.
We absolutely can, and will, go get those asteroids.
That's not the case. If the USA had a more functioning political system (ranked choice voting etc) and didn't hate 'communism' so much then they would have healthcare.
See also: not having daily mass shootings.