- The U.S.-Israeli time is likely to run short on ammunition reserves, with both sides facing greater stress in the costly missile and deterrence contests.
- While U.S. and Israeli strikes have significantly damaged Iran’s infrastructure and missile capabilities, Iran is changing its targeting, relying on cheap drones, and focusing on inflicting psychological and economic pain rather than destroying military targets.
- Even with high levels of violence, the extraordinary cost and limited production of advanced US defense systems like Patriot and THAAD risk depleting Western reserves, with international implications that could shape future conflicts beyond the Middle East.
President Donald Trump It has suggested that the air campaign of the United States and Israel in Iran will continue until “they cry uncle, or when they can’t fight anymore.” Iran’s Foreign Minister has said that their army will fightas long as” and that they have no intention of negotiating a ceasefire.
But continuing the war is not just a matter of love; it’s a matter of method. And one primary constraint on how long a conflict can last is how much ammunition each side has to sustain it. Currently, it is an arms race between Iran’s missiles and drones and countermeasures by the US, Israel and the Gulf States to bring them down. And while the answers to questions about their abilities are closely guarded, there are signs of stress on both sides.
And his usual military overmatched with his network regional partners have been badly damagedIran’s remaining main means of “fighting” is its stockpile of missiles and drones.
Iran has fired thousands of one-way missiles and drones in 13 countries, killing at least 43 people, according to data collected by the Israeli think tank INSS. These include seven American servicemen. Iran has hit a variety of targets, from US military bases to luxury hotels in Dubai to Amazon data centers. Wednesday, three ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz was attacked by drones as part of Iran’s efforts to shut down one of the main parts of the world’s energy market.
This is less than the damage that has been caused by the United States and Israel on Iran, where more than 1,200 people have been killed according to Iranian authorities, and most of the country’s military and political infrastructure has been destroyed.
But Iran’s attacks would have been far worse for the wider region if the countries they were targeting did not have such strong defenses against missiles and drones. Many countries that have been heavily targeted seem to be successful in intercepting 90 percent of the estimate Iran has fired at them.
Doing so is not easy, however. The interceptors are among the most sophisticated and in-demand weapons in the world, and successful capture efforts have come at a high cost.
United States burned on average 2.4 billion dollars worth of Patriot receivers, which cost nearly $4 million each, in the first five days of the war. During the crisis of June last year The United States used about a quarter of its total stockpile of THAAD receiverswhich is supplied from the anti-missile phone battery. Just about 11 inserts are made per yearand the rate of consumption is likely to be the same this time.
“You’re on the wrong side of the cost curve if you’re doing missile defense the first time,” he said Sam Lair of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “That’s just the reality of how these, these types of wars work. Connectors are expensive, they’re scarce, and not many are produced every year.”
These types of interceptors are sometimes referred to as “table pegs” of today’s fierce missile and drone war, and references to the current Mideast missile war are heard far beyond the region. officials say interceptors are needed because the war in Ukraine is directed to the Middle East. In a sign of how great the need has become, America is reporting moving parts of the powerful THAAD interceptor system from South Korea to the Middle East in the same week that North Korea is testing missiles from its latest warship.
Offensive weapons, while less of a concern, are also an issue: The United States may need years to replenish its stockpile of Tomahawk missilesto take one example.
“For years, all the services have been issuing precision reserves at a faster rate than their replacement rates,” said MacKenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
How long can Iran continue to fire?
Heavy attacks by the US and Israel against Iran’s missile facilities are affecting its ability to make a first launch. According to the US military, the number of Iranian missiles has decreased by 90 percent, and the firing of drones has decreased by 83 percent since the beginning of the conflict. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called “Great evidence of destruction.”
Some experts believe the decline in firing is evidence that Iran is holding back some of its weapons, anticipating a longer conflict, but it is still safe to say that by any standard measure, Iran is “losing” the missile war.
But the goal of Iran’s leaders is not to defeat the United States and Israel – there was no question about that – it is to continue to inflict pain until Trump, faced with rising gas prices, a bad economy, declining poll numbers, and grumbling allies, decides to call it quits and rejects calls for renewed war later.
Before last June’s “12-day war,” Iran was believed to have between 2,000 and 3,000 missiles in its stockpile. It fired nearly 600 missiles in the conflict, and many more were destroyed on the ground by Israeli airstrikes, but in the months that followed, Iranian leaders had struggled to replenish those stocks. and strengthen their defenses.
Most of these were concentrated underground”missile cities.” In the first phase of the war, these were hit hard, and Iran’s air defense could not protect them. Mobile launchers were often destroyed immediately after leaving the devices. The United States has used bunker bombs to destroy the entrances to the cities, leaving hundreds of missiles hidden underground. Israel estimates that it has destroyed or buried nearly 70 percent of Iran’s missile launches. Even if those estimates are high, the speed with which the United States and Israel have been able to dismantle much of Iran’s feared missile defense system has surprised many observers.
Iran has also been something of a pioneer in the development of one-way drones. The low-cost Iranian “Shahed” has been widely used by the Russian military against Ukrainian cities for years. The United States is is now deploying its drone with a close-up design on weapons. The size of Iran’s drone stockpile is unknown, but before the war, its production capacity it was estimated at around 10,000 per monthalthough it is certainly less now.
Although less powerful, these drones could be instrumental in Iran’s efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to oil shipments. In this campaign, the Iranians may have taken a lesson from their Yemeni allies, who used a a small number of drones and missiles bring chaos to the Red Sea during the war in Gaza.
Iran’s choice of targets in this war has been unexpected. While some people fear a breach of peace against Israel that would bring the country’s air defense, the attacks have become more widespread, while 20 times more than the total number of projectiles directed against the Gulf states than Israel. This may be the result of damage caused to the command structure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Iranian doctrine gives missile commanders wide freedom to choose their targets when they have no word from Tehran.
“It was 30 different IRGCs, commanders doing their own thing, and that’s why we saw them doing things like attacking Oman, which didn’t make sense to anyone,” said Decker Eveleth, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis, noting that Oman was the country that tried to mediate the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States in the run-up to war.
Iran may also be targeting the Gulf because those are the missiles it still has. It used most of its long-range weapons to attack Israel during the 12-day war. Its short-range missiles, aimed mainly at the Gulf and US bases in the region, had not been touched and had not been heavily bombed in the early days of this war. They have been hit hard in the last few days. By hitting airports and hotels instead of military targets, Iran may also be aiming to demoralize and terrorize the local population, continuing similar attacks on Israeli cities during last year’s 12-day war. “They started hitting more civilian areas,” said Nicole Grajewski of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It turned out to have a huge psychological cost to the Israelis – it was very frightening for them on a population level.”
The hope may be that the damage to regional countries may reach the point that their governments will begin to put more pressure on Trump to end the war, although it may also have the negative effect of bringing them directly into conflict.
As for Israel itself, Iran has started firing missiles equipped with pole arms exploded at high altitude, scattering small bombs. Although less effective against difficult military targets, these have the advantage of being difficult to intercept. (They too banned by more than 120 countries (because of the danger that unexploded ordnance can pose to civilians long after the fighting has ended.)
Despite the high levels of deterrence, there are signs that the region is not fully prepared for an Iranian invasion.
Some analysts have questioned it why the six American soldiers killed in Kuwait on March 1 were working in what appeared to be a temporary operations center, given that it was the United States that decided when the war began. Axios has reported that US officials last year refused to give Ukrainian to sell the same anti-drone technology it is now installing under fire. There were also reports early in the war that the Gulf states were running dangerously short of links and that the US was struggling to provide them with more. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE rely on advanced US-made systems such as Patriot and THAAD for air defense, which, while highly effective, are very expensive and unsuitable for carrying large numbers of missiles and drones.
The UAE has he managed to use a helicopter to shoot down drones at low cost, and experts from Ukraine – a country that now knows a thing or two about launching missiles and Iranian-made drones – sent to the region to consult. In general, the fear of running out of links has decreased as the number of Iranian launchers has decreased.
For Israel, it is it does not announce its blocking speed at this time to make it difficult to assess its reserves, but the country was also reported to be running low on reserves. at the end of the 12 day war.
Iran is still getting missiles and drones at their targets. On March 10, more than 25 percent of drones UAE dismissals were successfulmuch higher than the previous days. Iran also now appears to be on the radar equipment used by the United States to track incoming missiles.
Modern interlopers can bring down more of what Iran is firing at US troops and Middle Eastern cities in this war right now. But the effect can be seen in the next. And even if Iran no longer has sufficient resources to increase regional defenses, they can hope to sustain the threat long enough to make the costs bearable.
