They used up a lot of the remaining tomahawk inventory apparently. These operations, done without congressional approval, are wasting literal billions. Repositioning multiple carrier groups and spending lots of munitions isn’t cheap. And yet the administration thinks some alleged small scale Somalian fraud deserves all our attention.
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. 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.
Trying a little experiment. Here's the same comment as above, but I asked Claude to research my claims and add web citations. Any errors in content are my own - I originally wrote the comment with no AI assistance and only brief web searching to check my numbers.
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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.
What is the optimal strategy for Iran, if they assume that the regime can withstand the intensive bombardments and people won't take it to the streets like US / Israel are assuming ?
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 ?
13 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 43.4 ms ] threadTinfoil hat time?
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.
---
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...
That seems unlikely.
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.