The world feels more dangerous than it's been in a generation.As the United States finds itself back in active conflict in the Middle East, Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine grinds into its fifth year.
The world holds its breath to see whether China moves on Taiwan.And after decades of treating our defense industrial base like a peacetime operation, that strain is exposing just how fragile America's arsenal can become.For decades, the Pentagon has bought munitions the way a peacetime military does: year to year, program by program, with procurement requests that shift with each budget cycle.
Years of perceived peace let us coast on the stockpiles already built, without reckoning with the impact this had on our industrial base.Manufacturers were left guessing at demand from one year to the next, and that uncertainty withered production capacity over time.The war in Iran put this problem on full display.
The conflict has put sustained demand on precision munitions and air defense interceptors – affecting both the United States and our allies.Gulf partner nations have warned U.S.
officials that their interceptor stocks are running dangerously low, and the Pentagon has been forced to pull THAAD and Patriot batteries out of South Korea to cover the gap.MORE THAN HALF OF SOME US WEAPONS STOCKPILES USED IN IRAN WAR, RAISING CONCERNS ABOUT CHINA THREATThis didn’t happen in a vacuum.Munitions production has been under-resourced across administrations for years and this is now showing up on the ground.
Troops and commanders are having to make calls about where scarce weapons get allocated.A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S.Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency.
(U.S.Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency/Handout via Reuters)Despite these operational constraints, U.S.-made air defense systems continue to perform admirably in b...