Financial Times
Limited supplies of critical defensive munitions to protect US forces and allies from Tehran’s missiles are likely to shape the military offensive against Iran, according to officials and analysts.
The US and Israel burned through their stockpiles of interceptors at an unprecedented rate during last year’s 12-day war, when Iran fired hundreds of missiles at Israel.
Now, the US military is weighing the likelihood that Iran’s retaliation will strain the supply of those crucial munitions while it struggles to replenish them, affecting not just the war in Ukraine but also Washington’s battle plans for any possible conflict with China or Russia.
The “magazine depth” — military jargon for the stockpiles of available munitions — of the US’s Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, anti-missile systems was of particular concern, said a regional military official.
The US fired as many as 150 THAAD munitions to defend Israel last year, they said. It has ordered fewer than 650 of them in total since the system went into operation around 2010.
Washington could “easily” expend a “whole year’s worth” of critical defensive munitions in just one or two days of operations “if Iran were able to launch multiple large salvos of missile and drone attacks” at US forces and Israel, said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defence programme at the Center for a New American Security think-tank.