Depleted

The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed back on reports of shortages of both offensive and defensive weapons.

United States President Donald Trump has vowed to hunt down “leakers” after several news reports detailing a dangerous depletion of munitions stockpiles amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

While several reports had previously documented munitions depletions since the war began on February 28, the latest reports painted a more dire picture.

Reuters news agency and CBS News reported that the military had burned through nearly all of its offensive Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMSs) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs), which experts said could require relying on more perilous close-range and aerial attacks in the event of a renewed escalation.

A CNN report showing low levels of Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors has caused greater concern, with experts noting there is no viable short-term alternative to the air defence missiles. Replenishments of pre-war stockpiles are expected to take years.

Still, Trump on Thursday again denied that the US faced any strategic disadvantage when it came to weapons stores after five months of war.

“The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

He added that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed” and that defence contractors are “building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history”.

“The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long-term jail sentences will be sought!”

The US president did not provide further details on the claims, although experts have warned that even with an influx of funding, it will likely take at least three years to restore Patriot and THAAD interceptors to pre-war levels.

Only Japan and Germany currently have licences to produce Patriot interceptors. No other country produces THAAD interceptors.

CNN’s report, released on Tuesday, said that the US military had depleted 80 percent of the THAAD interceptors it had prior to the war and about half of its Patriot interceptors. Sources described the levels as “dangerously low”.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described the information as “not true”.

Separately, the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on July 27 calculated that, as of that date, the military had just more than a third of its Patriot interceptors left and about half of its THAAD interceptors.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, one of the authors of that analysis, retired US Marine Corps colonel Mark Cancian, said current levels of interceptors are already hurting US deterrence capabilities against military powers like China.

A shortage of interceptors has also reportedly led to the military taking a more judicious approach to missile interceptions, increasing the likelihood of miscalculations, he noted. The killing of three US soldiers in an Iranian strike on a military base in Jordan on July 17 has further underscored those concerns.

“We don’t have that many left, and there are no good substitutes,” Cancian said of the interceptors. “If we run out of Patriots, then the missiles get through.”

Despite the latest rhetoric, the Washington Post on Thursday reported that Trump confronted Hegseth during a cabinet meeting at Camp David last week, accusing the Pentagon chief of misleading him on munitions shortages.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt dismissed the report as “100 percent fake news”.

The first days after the earthquake were defined by what had been lost. Apartment blocks lay in ruins, entire neighborhoods disappeared beneath the rubble, hospitals overflowed, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans found themselves without a home. Yet as the emergency slowly gave way to recovery, another realization has emerged, one less dramatic but perhaps more consequential. 

Venezuela did not only lose buildings: it is now discovering that it has very little left with which to rebuild them.

Reconstruction is often described as something that begins after disaster strikes. In reality, it begins years earlier, with the reserves a country accumulates while times are good. Wealth matters, but so do things that rarely appear in economic statistics: functioning institutions, domestic industries, engineering firms, construction companies, reliable electricity, access to credit, insurance markets, emergency planning, skilled workers and the public trust needed to mobilize them all. These are the hidden reserves that allow societies to absorb shocks. The earthquake revealed that Venezuela had spent much of them long before the ground began to shake.

That depletion has become evident in almost every aspect of the response. Venezuela imports a significant share of the food it consumes and much of its medicine. The emergency quickly exhausted whatever inventories existed. Heavy machinery needed to clear debris had to be sought abroad. Medical supplies became scarce almost immediately. Temporary shelters proved insufficient, forcing thousands of survivors to remain in tents erected in parks and public spaces weeks after the disaster. The government is now considering housing many of them in schools, an understandable emergency measure made possible only because classes are suspended for the summer.

Temporary solutions, however, have a habit of becoming permanent in Venezuela. Families displaced by the Vargas Tragedy of 1999 and by the 2010 floods spent years, in some cases decades, living in shelters that were never meant to become homes. The earthquakes risk repeating a familiar pattern, not because Venezuelan authorities necessarily want it to, but because they have long lacked the capacity to offer anything else.

The Venezuelan diaspora contains an extraordinary concentration of precisely the human capital required to rebuild the country. Whether that expertise can be persuaded to return, even temporarily, remains an unlikely scenario.

Some will inevitably attribute this lack of preparedness primarily to sanctions. It is an understandable argument, but one that struggles to explain what the earthquakes actually exposed. The collapse of domestic industry, the deterioration of public infrastructure, chronic underinvestment in the electrical grid, the shrinking of Venezuela’s manufacturing base and the erosion of emergency response capacity all began years before oil sanctions were imposed.

Recent research has also challenged the idea that sanctions caused a discrete collapse in access to food and medicine, showing instead that essential imports had already fallen dramatically before sanctions and later stabilized as the government dismantled some of its own economic controls. The sanctions era itself demonstrated that Venezuela retained the ability to import consumer goods. Supermarkets gradually refilled for those able to pay. Construction cranes returned to Caracas’ wealthiest neighborhoods. Restaurants multiplied. Consumption recovered far more quickly than productive capacity.

The earthquake exposed the difference.

The destruction of resilience

Disasters ask questions that ordinary economic life does not. They care little about how many imported products sit on supermarket shelves or how many luxury apartments are being built in eastern Caracas. They ask whether a country can mobilize excavators, engineers, trauma surgeons, logistics networks, emergency housing, electricity, financing and public institutions at scale. They ask whether resilience has been accumulated or consumed. Venezuela’s answer has been painfully clear.

That is perhaps one of the least understood legacies of chavismo. Much has been written about the destruction of wealth, the collapse of oil production or the country’s prolonged recession. Less attention has been paid to the destruction of resilience itself. For years, the Venezuelan State approached institutions with the same extractive logic that governed its relationship with oil. Productive assets became sources of immediate political or fiscal returns rather than investments to be maintained and strengthened. Private companies were expropriated rather than incorporated into development. Public enterprises became instruments of patronage rather than production. Infrastructure was consumed faster than it was repaired. The country did not merely become poorer. It gradually spent the reserves that societies rely upon when catastrophe arrives.

Resources that may have financed future growth must now finance immediate recovery.

The consequences extend far beyond physical infrastructure. Reconstruction is ultimately carried out by people, and Venezuela has spent the last two decades exporting many of those it now needs most. Engineers who now design highways in Spain, petroleum specialists managing fields in Texas or Guyana, architects working across Latin America, doctors practicing in Colombia and Chile, electricians, project managers and construction supervisors who left because opportunities disappeared at home. The Venezuelan diaspora contains an extraordinary concentration of precisely the human capital required to rebuild the country. Whether that expertise can be persuaded to return, even temporarily, remains an unlikely scenario.

Money presents an equally daunting challenge. Before the earthquake, Venezuela’s slow economic reopening had begun to attract cautious international interest. Much of it remained exactly that, cautious. Memoranda of understanding outnumbered signed investment agreements, access to financing remained limited and investors continued to price Venezuela’s political risks accordingly. The expectation, however tentative, was that new investment would increasingly flow toward rebuilding the electrical grid, expanding oil production and modernizing neglected infrastructure. The earthquake has fundamentally altered those priorities. Resources that may have financed future growth must now finance immediate recovery. Every home rebuilt is a home that cannot wait. Every hospital repaired is indispensable. Every bridge reconstructed delays another project that might otherwise have expanded productive capacity. Reconstruction does not replace development. It postpones it.

Reconstruction-era uncertainty and challenges

The financing challenge has also become more complicated politically. Investors had already approached Venezuela with understandable caution. The humanitarian emergency has increased the country’s fiscal needs precisely as political uncertainty has deepened. The constitutional arrangements established after Nicolás Maduro’s removal were always presented as exceptional. As they become more prolonged and their legal basis increasingly contested, companies considering long-term reconstruction projects must ask whether contracts signed today will remain secure under whatever government eventually succeeds the current one. Investors do not need constitutional certainty, they simply need enough legal certainty to believe that agreements lasting ten or twenty years will survive political change. Venezuela offers remarkably little of it.

This is also why Delcy Rodríguez’s recent call for the lifting of sanctions misunderstands the country’s central problem. Whatever benefits further sanctions relief might provide, it cannot eliminate the uncertainty surrounding Venezuela’s legal and political environment. Investors deciding whether to finance ports, housing developments or power plants are unlikely to base their decisions on sanctions alone. They also ask whether contracts will survive a change of government, whether courts will enforce them and whether today’s authorities will still possess the legal authority to honor them tomorrow.

Reconstruction depends on trust, functioning institutions, access to capital, legal certainty and a productive economy capable of sustaining the effort long after international solidarity inevitably fades.

There is another irony hidden beneath the rubble. The Venezuelan insurance industry will likely survive this catastrophe better than many expected, not because losses have been modest, but because so much of what was lost was never insured. This was an under-insured disaster. Homes, businesses and families that lacked coverage will inevitably look toward the state for assistance. Yet the state that spent years hollowing out its own fiscal and institutional capacity now finds itself acting as insurer of last resort, precisely when it possesses the fewest resources to fulfill that role.

Natural disasters often become moments of national renewal. Reconstruction can modernize infrastructure, attract investment and accelerate reforms that politics alone struggles to produce. Those opportunities exist in Venezuela as well. Rebuilding cities will require new housing, new roads, new power systems, new telecommunications infrastructure and new industries capable of supplying them. But opportunities are only as valuable as a country’s ability to seize them. Reconstruction depends on trust, functioning institutions, access to capital, legal certainty and a productive economy capable of sustaining the effort long after international solidarity inevitably fades.

The earthquake destroyed thousands of buildings. Rebuilding them will take years. What it ultimately revealed, however, is something far more difficult to reconstruct. Over the last quarter century Venezuela has steadily depleted much of the industrial, institutional, financial, human and political capital that countries quietly accumulate before disasters occur. Those invisible reserves are what determine whether recovery becomes a matter of years or generations. They cannot be imported as easily as food or medicine. They have to be rebuilt, patiently, one institution at a time.

During the 39-day war with Iran, the U.S. used so many key offensive and defensive weapons that it will take three or more years to rebuild some of these stocks to pre-war levels, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The report, compiled by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, highlights concerns we raised long before and during Operation Epic Fury about the rapid expenditure of critical munitions and how that could affect a potential future fight against China. U.S. military leaders have suggested that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could be in a position where it would feel confident in launching an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.

The warning light on America’s magazine depth was blinking red long before Epic Fury. The stockpiles, especially of Standard Missile-3s (SM-3) and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors, were degraded by more than a year of combat in the Red Sea region with the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and several efforts to defend Israel. U.S. support for Ukraine, meanwhile, drained off supplies of Patriot air defense interceptors. We will address these issues in more detail later in this story. The weapon expenditure figures in the CSIS report only address Epic Fury, not previous U.S. engagements in the Middle East.

The most drastic setback to U.S. inventories involved the use of Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAMs) and THAAD and Patriot interceptors, according to CSIS. The think tank derived its expenditure figures from an internal analysis, which TWZ cannot independently verify.

Tomahawks

The exact amount of Tomahawks on hand is secret, however, researchers at CSIS calculated that prior to the Feb. 28 launch of Epic Fury, the U.S. had about 3,100 TLAMs. CSIS said it based its estimates on Fiscal Year 2027 Pentagon budget documents.

CSIS estimated that U.S. forces lobbed more than 1,000 TLAMs at Iran during the conflict, or about a third of the entire inventory as assessed by the think tank.

Making up that supply will take some time. Tomahawk procurement “averaged 86 missiles in the past 10 fiscal years (FY 15–FY 26), with most orders coming from the Navy,” CSIS noted. 

While Raytheon, which makes the missiles, has a goal of increasing capacity to produce more than 1,000 Tomahawks per year, “the recent annual production rate is less than 200 because of small past orders,” according to the think tank. “Existing orders will begin replacing the 1,000+ Tomahawks expended during the Iran War, but will not be enough to fully restore inventories to pre-war levels.”

Another factor to consider are foreign military sales, with nearly 800 due to Japan, Australia and the Netherlands.

THAAD

CSIS estimated that before the war began, the U.S. had about 400 THAAD interceptors and used between 190 and 290 during the war to protect American and allied interests. According to The Washington Post, about 200 were deployed defending Israel in particular.

The Army “has requested 857 THAAD interceptors in FY 2027,” CSIS explained. “Their deliveries, projected to start in mid-2029, will complete the replacement of Iran War usage by the end of calendar year 2029.”

The delivery timelines in the budget documents “imply that THAAD production is at the current surge rate of 96 interceptors a year,” the report states. “With additional facilities and tooling, Lockheed Martin plans to expand production capacity to 400 a year, a needed increase to fulfill large U.S. procurement orders and those of allies.”

The strain on the reservoir of THAAD interceptors is something we brought up last year during the 12-Day-War between Israel and Iran, when reports suggested that the U.S. Army fired off about 150 to protect Israel.

PATRIOT

At the start of the war, there were about 2,500 Patriot interceptors in the U.S. inventory, according to CSIS, though its accompanying chart does not specify which variant. During the course of the conflict, between 1,060 and 1,430 Patriots were fired. We don’t know what that tally includes, but we do know that PAC-2 and PAC-3 series interceptors have been employed in the latest conflict with Iran.

Current production PAC-3 MSE “is around the baseline rate of 650 interceptors per year, with half the deliveries going to the United States and the rest to allies and partners,” CSIS postulated. 

Under a contract with the Pentagon inked in January, Lockheed is committed to boosting Patriot annual production to 2,000.

“Because U.S. procurement in the last decade has averaged 225 missiles per year, deliveries from prior years will not be enough to fully replace expenditures,” CSIS cautioned. “For that, the United States will need to wait for the 3,203 Patriot missiles requested in the Army’s FY 2027 budget. These are projected to start delivery in May 2029.”

As we have previously noted, between U.S. usage and commitments to Ukraine and nearly 20 other nations, there have long been concerns about the supply of Patriot interceptors. Still, the Pentagon has maintained that it has sufficient supplies.

SM-3 and SM-6

Before Epic Fury, the U.S. Navy had about 400 SM-3s, capable of intercepting ballistic missiles in space, and used upwards of about 250, according to CSIS. There were about 1,250 Standard Missile-6s (SM-6), which can intercept air-breathing and ballistic missile targets, as well as attack targets on land and at sea, in the arsenal and between 190 and 370 were launched.

These munitions will take about two years to replenish to pre-war levels, CSIS estimated.

“Both missiles have lengthy production lead times,” the think tank explained. “The Missile Defense Agency and the Navy requested large quantities in the FY 2027 budget: 78 SM-3 Block IBs, 136 SM-3 Block IIAs, and 540 SM-6s. These orders will take between 36 and 39 months to begin deliveries once Congress provides appropriations.”

“Because of the small size of past orders, inventories will not return to pre-war levels until early 2029 despite the relatively low usage in the campaign,” CSIS pointed out.

Our prior reporting pointed out that concern over the magazine depth of these missiles, especially the SM-3, became acute after that munition was used for the first time during the massive April 2024 Iranian missile and drone barrage against Israel. The SM-3s proved so successful that the Navy’s top official in May 2024 called for more to be made after production had been curtailed on some variants. At the time, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) wanted to end procurement of SM-3 Block IB variants by the end of 2024 and limit its buy of the follow-on Block IIAs to just 12 per year through Fiscal Year 2029.

The fight against the Houthi rebels of Yemen from October 2023 to early 2025 exacerbated these magazine depth issues for both of these Navy missiles. The aforementioned 12-Day War saw another 80 SM-6s used to defend Israel, further depleting supplies.

JASSMs

There were more than an estimated 4,000 stealthy air-launched Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in the U.S. arsenal before the war and U.S. aircraft fired off more than 1,100 of them. However, though heavily used, there will be “large deliveries from recent procurements.”

“U.S. forces began this campaign with a sizable JASSM inventory,” according to CSIS. “The Air Force has procured large quantities of these long-range cruise missiles since the 2000s—on average, nearly 500 a year for the past decade. To deliver these orders, current production appears to be already at the surge rate unlike the other munitions discussed in this article. Further, the missile was not used in operations until 2018. Thus, while over 1,100 JASSMs were expended, U.S. inventories will recover fairly quickly as past orders are delivered.”

PrSMs

The ground-launched Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) is the longer-ranged tactical ballistic missile successor to the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). It was used for the first time during Epic Fury.

The inventory of these missiles, however, “is limited as it is a relatively new system with deliveries beginning in 2023,” CSIS highlighted, estimating that there were fewer than 100 prior to the war. During the conflict, between 40 and 70 were used, the think tank posited.

“Lockheed Martin has been scaling up PrSM production, setting an annual target of 400 units last year and announcing further increases under the framework agreement with the Trump administration.

Asked about the CSIS report, the Pentagon did not express concerns.

“America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the president’s choosing,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to TWZ. “We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests.”

Despite Parnell’s statement, the expenditure of weapons in Epic Fury is having a cascading effect on supplies. Last week, for instance, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao testified before the Senate that the U.S. is pausing arms sales to Taiwan because of the war with Iran. 

“Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury,” Cao told Sen. Mitch McConnell.

America’s reputation as an arms provider had already taken a hit when it cut off supplies of Patriots and other weapons to Ukraine last year over concerns about the U.S. stores. Deferred or slowed deliveries are common among other allied customers as well now.

The president’s $1.5 trillion FY 2027 defense budget “reflects these magazine depth concerns,” CSIS suggested. “A war supplemental for additional munitions funds is expected as the DOD seeks to replace what was expended in Operation Epic Fury and then build inventories above the pre-war levels. The administration has also signed a series of framework agreements with industry to expand munitions production capacity, which could expedite future deliveries.”

Tensions around the world bring into question whether even expedited timelines for production of these weapons is adequate to meet near-term future needs. As we mentioned earlier in this story, there are concerns that China could move on Taiwan over the next few years, a conflict that could draw in the U.S. There are other flashpoints in the Pacific that could touch off a China fight. 

Beyond that, there are always concerns about threats from North Korea, which continues to build up its military. Russia, meanwhile, is fighting a war in Ukraine that Europe is worried could spill across the continent. Any of these potentials, plus those we don’t even know about yet, would further draw down U.S. supplies should it get into a shooting war.

Meanwhile, there is a non-zero chance that even more of these weapons could be expended should the U.S. and Iran resume hostilities. Just last night, a U.S. official told us that CENTCOM swatted down four Iranian drones and fired on a ground control station in Bandar Abbas about to launch a fifth.

CENTCOM said Kuwaiti forces intercepted a ballistic missile Iran launched in response.

With the shaky ceasefire marred by these intermittent kinetic exchanges and the peace negotiations sputtering on, a new drain on U.S. weapons stockpiles remains a real possibility.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com