Defense

Congress confronts new questions about US stockpiles, Iran firepower

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by Ellen Mitchell and Filip Timotija - 05/13/26 6:38 PM ET

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by Ellen Mitchell and Filip Timotija - 05/13/26 6:38 PM ET

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s appearance before House and Senate appropriators on Tuesday hasn’t settled the debate in Congress over two mounting questions about the Iran war: whether U.S. stockpiles are dangerously low and how much firepower Tehran maintains.

Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday remained dubious of Hegseth’s claims that the U.S. military’s weapons stockpiles remain strong more than two months into the war, with the Pentagon chief this week on the attack to refute anyone who says otherwise.

Likewise, the Trump administration’s public insistence that Iran’s missile capability is all but obliterated was thrown into doubt following assessments from the intelligence community that Iran still has roughly 70 percent of its mobile launchers and 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile — first reported by The New York Times on Tuesday.

Hegseth on Tuesday in back-to-back hearings in the House and Senate dismissed concerns of strained stockpiles, accusing the press and lawmakers of overblowing the issue.

“First of all, the munitions issue has been foolishly and unhelpfully overstated,” Hegseth told House appropriators. “We know exactly what we have. We have plenty of what we need.”

Asked Wednesday whether Hegseth’s reassurances convinced her the U.S. is fine with stockpiles, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) simply replied: “No.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he found Heseth’s claims “absolutely ludicrous, given everything that we’ve heard from various sources, including public statements from military leaders themselves.”

Blumenthal also pushed back on the administration’s claims that Iran’s missile capability was destroyed.

“There’s no question that Iran still has more than 1,000 missiles, and I can tell you that I’m somewhat shocked to hear some of the rhetoric from Secretary Hegseth given what we have been told reliably,” he said.

And on Tuesday, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Army budget, panel Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) pointed out that the service’s munitions stockpiles “are under extreme strain.”

Republican senators struck a more assured tone.

“I’ve talked to Hegseth about it and they’re comfortable with it,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said of the current stockpile levels, adding that they will “absolutely” be replenished at some point.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told The Hill the U.S. has enough munitions “right now,” but that “we should never say we have too much, we could always use more.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said munitions are “getting spent down for sure,” but “our leadership assures us that the things that we need are still fine.” Asked at what point it becomes critical, Cramer said “we keep a close eye on it.”

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Defense and Security Department, said the U.S. munitions stockpiles are “reduced,” but noted that the military still has “large” numbers of shorter-range ground attack missiles.

However, these missiles, Cancian said, require the U.S. military to “penetrate more deeply into an adversary’s defensive zone and losses will be much higher.”

“That’s what we found with a US-China wargame that we ran last week using current munitions inventories,” Cancian, who spent more than three decades in the Marines, told The Hill on Wednesday.

Hegseth’s munitions claims are hard to reconcile with the Pentagon’s mammoth $1.5 trillion budget request for next fiscal year, which includes tens of billions of dollars for restocking missiles and interceptors.

The White House also is planning to ask Congress for a $80 billion to $100 billion supplemental for the war in Iran — with a significant chunk meant to backfill costly and sophisticated weapons expended in the now eleven-week conflict, which since early April has settled into a tense ceasefire.

The United States has reportedly burned through thousands of missiles since the Iran war began on Feb. 28, using nearly all of the long-range stealth cruise missiles left in Washington’s stockpile and depleting its stores of Tomahawks, Patriot interceptor missiles, Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles.

Still, defense officials maintain the U.S. is ready to return to war whenever President Trump gives the order, with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine on Tuesday telling the House Appropriati