America shot its arsenal empty in 2 wars. Now it needs Beijing’s permission to reload
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/america-shot-arsenal-empty-2-174409996.html
America shot its arsenal empty in 2 wars. Now it needs Beijing’s permission to reload
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/america-shot-arsenal-empty-2-174409996.html
10 Comments
Excerpt:
The inventory math is brutal. The [Center for Strategic and International Studies](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/us-military-depleted-half-most-expensive-missiles-cost-of-iran-war/) (CSIS) finds that in Iran alone, the United States burned through 45% of its Precision Strike Missile stockpile, half of its THAAD interceptors, nearly half of its Patriot PAC-3 inventory, roughly 30% of its Tomahawks, and more than 20% of its long-range JASSMs.
That is just one war. Add Ukraine, where, since 2022, the United States has shipped roughly one-third of its Javelin inventory, one-quarter of its Stinger stockpile, more than two million 155mm artillery rounds, and thousands of GMLRS rockets. The combined drain is what the Pentagon’s own internal assessments now describe as a “[near-term risk](https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/21/politics/us-military-missile-stockpile)” of running out of ammunition.
Tomahawk cruise missile. The United States burned through over 1,000 Tomahawks in Iran — ten years’ worth of production. Each one’s fin actuators run on samarium-cobalt magnets. China mines and refines 99% of the world’s samarium and [placed it under export licensing on April 4, 2025](https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/07/how-chinas-new-rare-earth-export-controls-target-pentagonand-world/406606/). To rebuild the inventory, [Raytheon](https://fortune.com/company/raytheon/) must turn to Beijing for samarium.
That is indeed brutal reading.
The point with samarium supply sounds mostly like a technical hurdle. The tomahawk design isn’t exactly new, and material science have come a long way since the design was finalized.
So USA cant keep this type of war and rythm for longer in Iran? Because i think that iran still have 70% of their drones and missils untouched
It wouldn’t be the first time that China’s hold on a supplychain backfired and motivated countries to innovate and move away from chinese production. Not easy and not done quickly, but a long term strategic loss for China. Unless a war happens in the meantime ofcourse.
Maybe I watched too many WW2 documentaries as a kid, but sometimes these numbers just don’t make any sense to me. Basically anything more intense than Afghanistan uses up our stockpiles faster than we can replenish them.
Some things like the artillery make sense. The US is not an artillery oriented force, so low production is fine. But every time I see production numbers for missiles, radars, ships, and planes I think there must be a missing zero or two.
Raytheon doesn’t need Beijing’s permission, it simply needs to source the samarium under false pretenses or buy it from a third party reseller. Russia, China, Ukraine, Iran, and many others have used this playbook successfully over and over.
Europe *started*, basically at zero. Arsenals were out of fashion.
The key problem is that to keep an industry alive, you need constant demand. Mass production requires a lot of demand.
If you stock up on cruise missiles or interceptors… you are stocked up. No more demand for decades.
“Luckily” demand is now high again.
Almost seems like long range strike capability is not the definitive geopolitical turnkey
It’s better to figure this out now than in the middle of an existential war of a much larger scale
The raw material part can likely be worked around. I’m sure the CIA can cook up some credible shell company bullshit to make an indirect purchase work. Just look what Mossad managed with their fake pager company.
The math on production capacity is the bigger problem.
And the even bigly-est problem is the putting a talk show host in charge of the military who then promptly delivered a fireworks spectacle that makes for good TV…when you really needed a credible strategic posture…with in stock hardware to back it.