Russia and China could feel emboldened to begin a hot conflict with America due to the US’s rapidly depleting weapons supply, senior officials and defense experts told the New York Times on Saturday.
The US has burned through its offensive and defensive weapons in its war against Iran. Sources told the NYT that the shortage could last beyond the Trump administration’s tenure in office, leaving future presidencies vulnerable to Russian and Chinese attacks.
Tom Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the depleted munitions stockpile was a “generational annihilation of the means of conventional deterrence.”
“It’s impossible for that not to have a significant effect on the decision calculus of Russia and China,” said Karako. “They may do something quite deliberate and at the time of their choosing, because keep in mind, we’re going to take years to reconstitute.”
Reuters recently reported that the US has used "virtually all" of its highly accurate long-range missiles. Notably, each long-range munition costs about a million dollars to produce.
As such, the Pentagon has been forced to move ships, aircraft, and air defense units from Asia and Europe to the Middle East. US officials who spoke to the NYT said that this has had “cascading consequences” for troop morale and equipment maintenance.
Low munitions stockpile could cause issues for presidents after Trump
The low stockpile has been a recent source of tension between the president and the Pentagon.
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine reportedly has been seeking “off-ramps” for the conflict.
The NYT reported that Caine informed US President Donald Trump about the munitions shortages before the war with Iran began, but the president chose to go ahead with the conflict.
The Washington Post found that in the first month of the conflict with Iran, the US had fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and over 1,000 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, and used at least 1,300 tactical ballistic missiles. The NYT reported that the US used at least 1,500 Patriot interceptors.
According to sources speaking on the condition of anonymity, the NYT reported that the US’s stockpile of Patriot interceptor missiles is at a low of 1,700 munitions.
The Trump administration has pushed US defense contractors to ramp up production for munitions.
"Our defense companies are, at this moment, making more munitions than they have ever made before, in addition to expanding their plants and equipment at record levels," Trump said in July.
The subsequently low stockpile levels have been a driving factor in Trump’s latest decisions in his campaign against Iran. The president reportedly chose not to go through with a major bombing campaign he threatened last month due to the low level of munitions.
The Washington Post reported last week that Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the shortage, which he assumed "had been fixed.”
Trump has also reportedly grown deeply upset at the leaked stories about the low stores of munitions, and has begun hunting down employees who have leaked stories. He told advisers to downplay the issue or blame his predecessors in an effort to avoid showing weakness to adversaries like Russia or China.
“Our defense companies are making more munitions than ever before, while rapidly expanding their plants and equipment at record levels,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, according to the NYT.
“Anyone entrusted with access to classified military information who leaks it to the media is betraying that trust and breaking federal law, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Trump has gone so far as to say that the US had “far more munitions than anyone in the world" and "far more than we need."
How do low US stockpiles affect Taiwan, Ukraine?
Because the US has deterred weapons from Ukraine, Kyiv has been unable to shield itself from Russian attacks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that interceptors for Ukraine “could have saved the lives” of at least dozens of people killed in a Russian attack last week.
He added that “it is this shortage of ballistic missile interceptors that only encourages Russia to launch such attacks that take human lives.”
Notably, Trump recently walked back his public agreement to give Zelensky the license to produce Patriot interceptors, though the Ukrainian president appears to be continuing negotiations with US defense contractors.
In Russia, pro-Kremlin bloggers have been noting the depleted US stockpiles as a win for Moscow.
“The situation is shaping up very favorably,” Aleksandr Kots, a pro-Russia war blogger, recently wrote.
“The less precision-guided weaponry the US has, the less will reach Ukraine.”
Kots added that even if the administration that succeeds Trump tries to advance aid to Ukraine, “doing so will be impossible with empty arsenals.”
The loss of interceptor missiles could be felt particularly acutely in Asia, as the US braces for a potential Chinese takeover of Taiwan.
The US military diverted several shipments of Tomahawk missiles and other long-range missiles from the US’s Indo-Pacific Command during the Iran war.
In a separate instance, air-defense systems were diverted from South Korea to the Middle East, leaving US troops in the country vulnerable to potential attacks from North Korea, sources told the NYT.
Reportedly, Russia and China have long understood that the US’s weapons stockpile is gradually depleting.
This has wide-ranging effects in Asia and Europe. Officials in Asia told the NYT that they worry that South Korea and Japan will begin to build nuclear weapons to establish their own forms of deterrence. In Europe, US allies have begun to purchase more weapons from other countries because of America’s weapons backlog.
Analysts told the NYT that a long conflict in Iran would therefore benefit Beijing and Moscow, and could cause Russia to consider an incursion into NATO territory if it believes it would at least outlast the US.
This comes as the Department of Defense told US defense industry leaders to prepare plans to escalate production and delivery of weapons as reports of munitions shortages escalate, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing a Defense Department memo.
Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote that the leaders had no more than 21 days to present plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” on Wednesday, according to the memo.
“Years-long development cycles are not acceptable. We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now.”
Danya Saperstein, Esther Davis, and Reuters contributed to this report.