Part 2: The U.S. Munitions Problem

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report in late April analyzing the status of U.S. munitions inventories following the 39-day air campaign against Iran. “Last Rounds? Status of Key Munitions at the Iran War Ceasefire” concludes that U.S. missile expenditure won’t constrain current operations, but significantly weakens preparedness for future wars. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported similar findings when the ceasefire began. In this discourse series, we comb through these reports for key numbers, themes and takeaways.

Long-Range Precision Fire Against Ground Targets:

Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM): 

• Unit Cost (millions): $2.6
• Pre-war Inventory: 3100+
• Used in Iran War: 1000+
• Delivery time (years): ~4 

The Navy launched over 850 TLAMs in the war’s first month. TLAMs continued to be expended until the ceasefire, bringing their total use to over 1,000. That’s almost all the TLAMs available in the theatre. Resupply is limited by ships needing to go to report to reload. 

Raytheon said it will increase annual production of these missiles to over 1,000 as part of a deal with the Trump administration. This news did not prevent the U.S. from delaying delivery of 400 TLAMs to Japan, which needs the missiles to achieve its historic military capacity-building goals.

Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM): 

• Unit Cost (millions): $2.6
• Pre-war Inventory: 4,400 
• Used in Iran War: 1,100+
• Delivery time (years): 4 

Over 1000 JASSMs were launched in the first month, per Bloomberg. Continued attacks in the days before the ceasefire, primarily from RAF bases, brought that up to over 1,100. 

CSIS notes that while Australia, Finland and Poland used JASSMs, those allies’ limited use will lower competition over replacement production following hostilities– in comparison to the Patriot or THAAD.

Precision Strike Missile (PrSM):

• Unit Cost (millions): $1.6
• Pre-war Inventory: 90
• Used in Iran War: 40-70
• Delivery time (years): ~4 

PrSM is a relatively new system so its inventory was small to begin with. Last year, Lockheed Martin set a production goal of 400 units per year, with further increases to come. Ukraine wants these, but will likely have to settle for more ATACMs, the PrSM’s older version, as the U.S. builds its stocks. 

Takeaways and themes

• All of these munitions allow long-range launches, which maximizes standoff distance from the target’s air defenses. This makes them valuable in a conflict against an adversary with robust air defenses and its own arsenal of long-range missiles, such as China. 
• The continued heavy reliance on Tomahawks (TLAMS) is problematic. For one, it is hurting our key allies in the Western Pacific. Japan is enjoying a rare moment of public support for military capacity-building, and Washington can’t deliver a key tool that it promised. 
• As we highlighted in “Combat Debut of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM): Implications,” PrSMs have proven their worth enabling ground forces to conduct precision strikes against high-value targets before air superiority is established. The relevance of this capability to operations in the Indo-Pacific are obvious. But current demand doesn’t line up with the inventory. Without faster procurement and production, the system’s impact will remain limited.

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Looking ahead:

In the next discourse in this series, we’ll look at the numbers for Air and Missile Defense: how many we have and how many have been used.

Find the complete CSIS report by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park here: “Last Rounds? Status of Key Munitions at the Iran War Ceasefire.”

Find the New York Times report by Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan here: “Iran War Has Drained U.S. Supplies of Critical, Costly Weapons.”

Find the Wall Street Journal report by Alexander Ward, Shelby Holliday, and Yoko Kubota here: “Iran War Complicates Contingency Plans to Defend Taiwan, Some U.S. Officials Say.”

This is the second of a four-part series on U.S. munitions inventories following the 39-day air campaign against Iran. The third will be published tomorrow, May 13th.

The first is available here.