Donald Trump Vows To Hunt Down ‘Leakers’ Saying US Running Out of Missiles
The White House has denied the war against Iran—now in its sixth month—has drained U.S. stockpiles of important weapons, such as ground-launched missiles used to strike targets deep inside Iran, and expensive interceptor missiles needed to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles across the Middle East.
Despite surging military spending and new factories popping up across the globe, air defense missiles and top-shelf weapons still have long lead times, meaning it could be several years before they are replaced once they are used up.
The U.S. has burned through most of its available long-range, highly accurate missiles, several outlets reported this week, raising concerns the U.S. would not be able to effectively fight Russia or China in a potential conflict in the near future.
Specifically, the U.S. Army has used up "virtually all" of two types of sophisticated long-range weapons, namely the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), Reuters reported on Tuesday.
This came shortly after Trump was said to have called off a planned two-week strike campaign on Iran in late July, partly because of anxieties over munitions stocks.
Trump said on Wednesday the U.S. had "massive amounts" of munitions and would be receiving "large" quantities of newly-produced missiles.
"The 'leakers' of these treasonous statements are being hunted down," he said in a post to his Truth Social platform. "Long term jail sentences will be sought!"
The U.S., Israel and other militaries allied with Washington in the Middle East used up nearly 11,300 munitions in just the first 16 days of the war from February 28, according to the Payne Institute for Public Policy.
Although military stockpiles are a closely-guarded secret, the U.S. was around a month away from completely exhausting its ATACMS and PrSM stockpiles, as well as its stores of interceptor missiles for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, the Payne analysts said in late March.
THAAD is one of the few systems able to knock Iranian ballistic missiles from the sky.
The U.S. had roughly 452 THAAD interceptors before the war, but had as few as 234 left by the end of July, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said last month.
Before the start of the conflict, the U.S. had approximately 2,330 interceptors for its Patriot air defense systems, according to the CSIS estimates. By July 27, this had dipped as low as 759.
Patriot air defense systems are one of the world's most sought-after air defense systems, credited with intercepting Russian hypersonic missile strikes in Ukraine. Hypersonic missiles travel at more than five times the speed of sound and Moscow has touted these weapons as unstoppable.
But Patriots are in high demand and scarce supply, with Ukraine lamenting that Patriot interceptors have been diverted away from the systems deployed around its cities to the Middle East since the beginning of the Iran war.
An entire Patriot system, including radars and launchers, costs in the region of $1 billion. Each interceptor missile alone can come with a several-million-dollar price tag.