>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.

Not an American but live here.

But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil.

So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the extent campaign finding from Israel lobby as they say dictated much of the foreign policy than national interest?

It’s just baffling and public seems largely fine with this with the lack of widespread protest that this should have caused (vaguely remember living across the bridge from Michigan all the protests there post Iraq war).

I'm always confused by prices of "highly regulated" goods in the United States.

When I get a $150,000 bill for a 15-minute hand-reconstruction surgery, how much of that bill is the total margin vs self cost? And how much of that is warranted / acceptable?

When a single Tomahawk missile bills the taxpayer $3,600,000, how much of that bill is the total margin? When I say "total margin", I mean not just the margin of the company that builds the Tomahawk itself, but the margins of all the components that were used in it -- every last bolt and every ounce of aluminum.

Now they'll exhaust interceptors and other long range missiles like tomahawks and whatnot.

And then China gets frisky with Taiwan and the US will totally not abandon them and tell them to just give up pressured by the lack of firepower to defend them, the risks of China getting back into bidding oil in international markets and the mess the treasury would be in if China raises capital by selling bonds (they just told the fed to print more so Japan can buy yens without selling their US bonds, so they are at least very concerned about the possibility).

Sorry for the rant.

The "drill here and drill now" crowd doesn't understand the concept of managing limited expendable resources?? Say it ain't so!

US apologists thought this is Hollywood. That Iron man and Thor will fly down from the sky.

Instead we saw videos after videos of Iranian missiles rain down from the sky.

There is a reason distributed systems are resilient. Iran's military doctrine of decentralized mosaic has proven to be a masterclass in military organization.

"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable.

Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "water shortage deception" at Midway in WW2 https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2024/december/bat...

Slightly concerned that there could be an unreported tit-for-tat. China "allegedly" arming/equipping Iran to perhaps the USA coverty planting unbalancing arms and equipment to Taiwan. The Ukraine (and Iran?) theater has shown how drone warfare has changed the game. A nation without a navy can now inexpensively counter a nation with one (ongoing 2-for-2 at the moment).

3 generations of wealth poured into the most expensive military in recorded history - the reason that we don't have health care, clean energy, decent social safety nets and so many other things... and they can't even control a small stretch of water. What a waste.

That's the one glaring weakness of relying too heavily on missiles. They are expensive and difficult to manufacture. And they have a limited shelf life, making stockpiles also expensive

In previous conflicts the US military could get a lot done with bombs, but that's risky if you can't get air superiority and take out all enemy anti-air systems. Which is more difficult against an enemy who can shoot at your air bases and aircraft carriers. But those previous conflicts might have contributed to a false sense of security about required missile stockpiles

Did the US just have the same fate as Russia where they where feared for their military until they used it?

North Korea has a bunch they're willing to sell. Russia is buying already so get 'em while they're hot.

I have been vaguely watching the Ukraine conflict over the past few years. From my distant and zero experience observations, it seems like missiles are extremely effective BUT also extremely limited. So you blow up that one building or SAM you targeted. Well done. What about the other 10,000 static targets? What about the guys with FPV drones and shoulder-launched anti-air now inside the rubble of the building you just destroyed? Send another XX-million USD missile to blow up the building you already blew up?

Feels like a determined adversary who is not easily cowed with a quick bit of "shock and awe" and armed with cheap, mobile winged/quad drones and man-portable guided anti-air/-tank missiles has totally changed the equation. Expensive limited missiles/planes/tanks/ships in smaller numbers seem kinda limited in their ability to get results in today's battlefield where there are FPV drones literally at every turn, and can be operated from literally a hole in the ground 15km away by people who aren't about to easily surrender.

It feels somewhat like the US doctrine has been to start with a "hit 'em hard" opening salvo of cruise/ballistic missiles and rockets etc and hope for immediate surrender. So far the lesson from Ukraine and Iran seems to be expect a big wave first attack or two and if you survive that initial push then suddenly the big super-power has no more cards left to play and it's down to men on the ground with hand-held weapons and drones. I wonder if people will look back at this era as a "WW1 moment" where the old ways of battle suddenly looked hopelessly out of date.

How is this not hidden even after 9 hours? The article vs the title is a crystal clear case of clickbait (or as the kids say these days: engagement farming).

Iwould fire more long-range precision missiles but Iran out.

If I was an ex KGB man running the rump of an ex empire, I'd be thinking of ways of disarming the strongest military in NATO. "Sure go ahead invade Iran, we are so impressed with your leader we wouldn't dare do anything to dissuade you."

A more technical source:

https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/08/04/...

We can just buy them from the Ukrainians.

How could someone even verify this claim?

If i was china wanting to invade taiwan, this is what i would buy.

That's hard to believe. US with it's military spending should be able to join two large scale conflicts at the same time, not to have problem with a one minor conflict.

Anyone have insight into the overlap of techies and armchair military experts? Every thread like this ends up overflowing with comments like "Let me explain to you what's really happening..."

Probably needed an excuse to rotate our stock out.

>The U.S. Army has used up

So not the US. There is also the Navy, Air Force etc

Borderline clickbait

How is this information public knowledge?

It might actually be for the best to stress the system in this way. It's not practical to keep a military based only around "stockpiles" that you're scared to use up. Modern combat looks like long wars of attrition where two countries compete to see who can burn through more missiles so you need to keep the actual supply chain active.

Hopefully they're able to learn lessons from Ukraine as well and pivot towards cheaper missiles and autonomous vehicles

> “U.S. has used…”

Missing the ‘has’ part for “present perfect tense”, e.g. “a past action with present relevance”.

In an ongoing war.

What is there even to say about this? Where does one even begin?

Wild how it only took 2 years of a dementia ridden corpse king to fundamentally gut America's global power indefinitely

Can anyone verify this through secondary sources?

Not sure why anyone has a taste for the kind of butch, chest-pounding performative foreign policy we have these days. Not only does it not work, it's dangerous to national security.

its good to drain pool and refill with fresh water every now and again

And we've advertised it to the entire world. And we've destroyed our economy. And we've further isolated ourselves from the world, culturally, politically, and economically.

Good job everyone with the voting. All those people voted for "let's make things universally worse for everyone except billionaires in America".

Does this mean that from now on bombings will happen with dumb bombs and that we can expect way more Iranian casualties? Otherwise this seems incorrect.

There are several conclulsions you can draw from all this:

1. The US has been strategically and militarily defeated by Iran and this has been clear since at least April to anyone who was paying attention and has achieved none of its objectives. More [1];

2. Continued use of so-called "stand off" weapons confirms that the US has been unable to achieve air supremacy over Iran and use gravity bombs. The article mentions this but doesn't really explain the implications; Reaper drones have been lost in large numbers. Air sorties are limited to also firing stand off weapons, mostly. One reason for this is an Iranian developed weapons system of loitering missiles that the US has designated as 358 and 359 missiles [2];

3. The US is spending an unprecedented amount of money on a war it has already lost that nobody wants. In some ways this mirrors the Nixon-Kissinger plan to bomb Cambodia until morale improves. Nobody wants to admit defeat. But wars are good for business. Some people are getting incredibly wealthy off all this. Munitions are the ultimate product. You use them once and then have to buy them again, often at $1M+ apiece;

4. This is the real story of American oil dependence over rewnewables. Nobody goes to war over a solar panel [3];

5. The article also mentions the drastically low inventory levels of missile interceptors (eg PAC-2, PAC-3, THAAD). This is in part why several US bases in the Gulf have been effectively destroyed and abandoned because the military cannot defend them. Iran is using very cheap weapon systems, particularly the Shahed drone, and can produce them in much higher numbers. Shooting down a $20k drone with a $1-4M missile does not scale;

6. This is going to rewrite Gulf politics as the promise of the American security-for-oil guarantee has shown to be a paper tiger. This is going to force a change for Gulf countries;

7. For all the complaining about the JCPOA, this administration has for absolutely no reason kicked the hornet's nest and the price of ending this war is going to be far, far higher. That will include (IMHO) an end to economic sanctions, unfreezing of Iranian assets, weakening of the petrodollar, compensation for Iran in the hundreds of billions and a concession that Iran can and will charge tolls for transit of the Strait of Hormuz in concert with Oman. Well done, everybody, the system works.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRAtD7iAgwY

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wMoKLuL8Jc

[3]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...

With stories like this you always have to ask “Who are the sources?”

“People who are familiar with this matter” is doing a lot of work.

This reeks of laundering lies.

A lot of the problem is with the current commander in chief's not very good strategy. Iran is huge and populous and would be very expensive to occupy with boots on the ground so no one really wants to go there. Trump thought he could just bomb their military assets and government and things would all be ok but the Iranians have been planning for that for ages and have everything distributed, duplicated and protected. A more normal leader might consult with allies who have been dealing with Iran for decades and make a coherent plan but he ignores them, tariffs them and threatens their territories. I'm not sure how it's supposed to work. He could launch 100% of the US's missiles at Iran and still not achive much.

I have no idea if this is true or not. If it is it shows a new level of incompetence for Hegseth and the current administration and clear hypocrisy in their messaging of 'america first'. It was ridiculous that we started the war believing it will be over in a weekend, but this is a mistake the US has made many many times before so to say this administration is different is silly. Then Hegseth allowed vaccine mandates to go away because no military in history has ever be harmed by disease. Now we (possibly) have depleted strategic munitions with essentially no strategic gain? This is a teenager's view of how to run/use the military. No understanding of history. No understanding of history (medical reediness or basic military tactics of the danger choke points), no understanding of the present (understanding Iran's likely responses and resolve or how vulnerable our bases and allies in the region were and are) and no understanding of the future (depleting strategic stockpiles of munitions without understanding what 'strategic stockpiles' means). We are idiots for even remotely tolerating such utter incompetence.

> Analysts say such weapons – which cost over $1 million each – would also be important in any conflict with China.

Said without context, there are not very many places close to China where these could be fired from, so I'm not so sure how useful they would really be in any South China Sea hot wars

> A fourth person familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the world.

The title seems fairy inaccurate

Goes to show every army does the same: they make, especially the lower echelons, largely correct predictions of future conflicts. Then they refuse to prepare for them.

The more things change.

The headline is inaccurate, as the article actually says that the US Army has used nearly all of its long-range precision missiles, referring to ATACMS and PCM.

First, those are short- to medium-range weapons.

Second, the USAF and USN hold most of the US's long-range precision weaponry, the only real exception being the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), which is not yet fielded.

All the expensive planes are falling out of the sky too. It seems like some weird plan to unwind the US ever since Obama left office.

There’s no growth or hope. It’s all bad news, war, and rumors of war - and all reads like a bad WWE script.

Just seems like a coordinated effort to destroy from within since about ~2016 or at least act out this play of America in Decline

Whatever, would be way better if they celebrate collaboration and forward thinking again.

Mainly because it’s just so boring under Trump - this should have been a 4 year show

What a fucking joke.

Typical CNBC article. Lying as usual.

Only PrSM and ATACMS reserves are low.

It's a good job their allies will defend them then if their ammo is low - this isn't sarcasm, it's the point of NATO, but hey if Trump still wants to pull out of that alliance...

Same way Russia ran out of missiles 3 years ago?

To no farking effect - Iran is still as bellicose as ever.

there is a lot of money to be made, building more of them :(

The article is about the Army (not the Navy or Air Force for example)

This is already the lifeline Europe is using to save its auto industry from the electric... the US is next. Just need to open up competitive bidding for the production of these components. Licensing patriot production to Ukraine will be a good start... S. Korea next

It's almost like the current decision makers are incompetent.

Trump is like Al Capone - just dumber.

There is not really any strategy here in place that makes sense from an US point of view. There is a strategy in place that may make sense for Netanyahu (e. g. remain in power) but this is not a US strategic point of view. Trump seems to be the most easily influenced roleplaying as "president". People need to follow the money trail here - that would explain the whole situation right now best.

Americans living in their bubble might be unable to see from a perspective, but from outside is quite apparent that American-Israeli conflict against Iran will long outlive both Trump and Netanjahu. Hopefully that was the last dumb thing and decision they made.

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This is good for Anduril. The future of war is cheap, massed, intelligent drones. Its strategically fortunate for us to burn through all of this expensive, obsolete crap.

I like how China and Russia are mentioned as adversaries that the US might be less likely to deter with their dwindling supply of long-range munition, but the country that so helpfully "received" (being bombed) all that supply and is the reason for the stockpile being minimal right now, isn't mentioned as an adversary that could take advantage of this.

used? as if it's paper towel wipe up some dirt? this is so depressing.

USA people, do you all really love killing other human? or you have no control of your democratically elected government at all?

The US only used long range precision missiles for the first 3 days of the war. Since then, its been almost all JDAMs. The interceptors got used a lot more but even with those we only went through about 5% of the stockpile. This is CNBC. If you trust them on topics like this, well...that's on you. Please remember that they don't have a single person on staff with any military experience or expertise.

PS Their source was probably the IRCG...