Defense Trump’s Iran timeline spurs concern over US weapons stockpiles by Ellen Mitchell - 03/04/26 6:00 AM ET by Ellen Mitchell - 03/04/26 6:00 AM ET Share ✕ LinkedIn LinkedIn Email Email NOW PLAYING The U.S. will likely start to feel strain on its munition stockpiles if America’s war with Iran stretches beyond the four-to-five-week timetable laid out by President Trump.  The Trump administration has said that its biggest wave of attacks on Iran is coming in the days ahead. And Trump on Tuesday insisted that the U.S. can fight wars “forever” with its current stockpile of munitions, calling their availability “virtually unlimited.” But analysts are skeptical of the president’s claims, with shortages in precision, high-end munitions and interceptors becoming more likely the longer the war continues.  Joe Costa, the director of the Forward Defense program at the Atlantic Council think tank, said the U.S. military is expending a significant amount of resources, including Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot interceptors, the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), and ship-launched missiles such as SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6. “I think it is very concerning in terms of the strain that this could put on our interceptor capacity if we maintain this sustained tempo over time,” said Costa, who previously served as the principal civilian advisor to Pentagon leadership for operational war planning and overseas force posture.   “Timelines are difficult without perfect information, but you’re talking weeks, not months,” he added.   Trump on his Truth Social platform declared that U.S. munitions stockpiles of so-called medium and upper medium grade weapons have “never been higher or better,” and that he was told the armed forces “have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.” “Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!),” he wrote. “At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be. Much additional high grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries.”  But the U.S. has still not resupplied high-end interceptors such as THAAD missiles — critical in defending U.S. military personnel against Iranian ballistic missiles  — after the military blew through 25 percent of its stockpile over just a few days of operations against Iran in June 2025. THAAD interceptors and Patriot missile systems have also been used extensively in operations in the Middle East, and Patriot missiles continue to be requested by Ukraine in its war with Russia. Because of the weapons’ complex and high-tech makeup, as well as production constraints, each replacement missile can take upwards of two years or more to make. Due to this, the U.S. currently can produce only several hundred THAAD and Patriot missiles each year. “Our production line is small enough that those won’t have been fully replenished since then,” Joel Rayburn, a senior fellow in Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, said of the THAAD missiles expended last year.  But Rayburn had a more optimistic view of the U.S. position in the war, telling The Hill: “I think the missile math favors us” due to Tehran’s own limited arsenal.  “The Iranian regime has already lost control of its airspace. . . . They’re not going to be spending, procuring or producing anything, because they’re under enemy fire. So whatever they have is what they’re going to expend. They can’t resupply themselves,” he said.  Still, Rayburn said expending too many munitions in the conflict with Iran could prove problematic for America’s future preparedness.  “Strategically beyond this conflict, it’s an issue for us, because if we have other contingencies that we need to have munitions planned for, and we’re expending a lot of the critically rare munitions here, then you know we’re going to have to have a strategy to account for that,” he said.  Other standard missiles that have been rapidly consumed are the Navy’s ship-launched SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 munitions. The missiles have been used to protect vessels in the Red Sea against the Houthis, an Iranian-proxy group in Yemen, as well as to defend Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles. The shortages have been so acutely felt that the Pentagon last year requested nearly $30 billion from Congress to backfill its high-end missiles and interceptors, but that request was only partially fulfilled in the Defense Department’s budget passed last month, The Washington Post reported. Costa said in this instance, the U.S. needs to strike enough Iranian launchers and missile