BLUF:
New Tomahawk variants with radar-absorbing stealth coating, and another with forward-canted wings, have been seen in use.
America has been expending Tomahawks at a faster rate than production for years now.
Interceptors may be depleted quickly at high tempo: Army interceptors in ten days, Navy interceptors in two weeks.
Use of these munitions makes U.S. willingness to sell Patriots to Europe less likely.
The expenditure of these munitions may mean that American power is diminished for a potential conflict with China over Taiwan.
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In this U.S. Navy released handout, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116) fires a Tomahawk land attack missile in support of Operation Epic Fury, on March 1, 2026 at Sea. (Photo by U.S. Navy via Getty Images)
The second round of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran have been devastating for Iran and essentially bloodless for the Americans and their allies – so far.
But the strike campaign isn’t without risk. President Donald Trump’s administration is expending a significant proportion of America’s best firepower – at a speed that may take the country’s industrial base years to replenish and leave American power diminished for other wartime scenarios.
Rebuilding that firepower could prove time-consuming and expensive, with serious implications for the war in Ukraine, and a potential conflict with China over Taiwan.
U.S. strikes on Iran have involved America’s best munitions, including some types that were unknown before now, such as new variants of the Tomahawk cruise missile. It took years and billions of dollars for the U.S. Defense Department to stockpile these munitions. It now risks depleting them in a matter of weeks.
European powers should take heed. As dire as America’s munitions problem is, Europe’s own missile stockpiles are far smaller—and its capacity to wage high-tech war is even more limited.
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NEW VARIANTS OF TOMAHAWKS SPOTTED, BUT EXPENDED FASTER THAN MANUFACTURED
Low-flying, subsonic cruise missiles apparently accounted for most of the munitions in the initial wave of U.S. strikes on Iran on Feb. 27 and 28. There’s imagery confirming the U.S. Navy fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from some of the roughly 12 destroyers and four attack submarines it has sent to the Middle East alongside the centerpieces of its deployed fleet: a pair of aircraft carriers.
The same imagery hints at potentially two new Tomahawk variants: one with what appears to be a radar-absorbing stealth coating and another with forward-canted wings, possibly for improved stealth.
The size of the U.S. Tomahawk inventory is a closely held secret, but it’s safe to assume it’s measured in the thousands. How many of the Raytheon-made Tomahawks the Americans fired in the first 24 hours in the current conflict is unclear, but the Pentagon has stated it targeted hundreds of facilities.
The problem is that, for years now, successive U.S. administrations have bought fewer of the $2.5-million Tomahawks than they’ve used every year, meaning the inventory has steadily declined.
The Trump administration expended hundreds of Tomahawks in Nigeria and on Iranian and Iranian-backed Houthi forces in 2025, but bought just 50 or so missiles over this same period.
The gap between cruise missile expenditures and cruise missile acquisitions looms over U.S. strategy for a possible war with China. An analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. concluded U.S. forces would need to fire 3,600 cruise missiles to halt a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Fortunately for the Americans, they can supplement surface-launched Tomahawks with air-launched Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missiles. There are thousands of the Lockheed Martin-made JASSMs in the U.S. arsenal and, compared to Tomahawk production, JASSM production is healthier. Lockheed Martin is already producing more than 700 JASSMs a year—and has plans to boost output to 2,000 a year.
But it’s possible the current campaign in Iran could eat into the JASSM inventory, too. The first wave of strikes on Feb. 27 and 28 may have mostly involved surface-launched munitions which, being pilotless, are the weapons of choice for attacks on air defenses.
Assuming this wave suppressed Iran’s air defenses, a second wave could include more warplanes firing air-launched munitions—including JASSMs.
SURFACE TO AIR INTERCEPTORS DEPLETED IN WEEKS:
U.S. forces are also expending their best surface-to-air interceptors at a dangerous rate. Kelly Grieco, a fellow with the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., crunched the numbers.
“Even a generous forward deployment could be rapidly depleted in a high-intensity conflict,” she wrote. “Forward stockpiles aren’t limitless: THAAD ~10 days, SM-3 ~2 weeks at high-tempo rates. Sustained attacks would stress U.S. missile defense quickly.”
The U.S. Army had just 400 or so of its best Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors before the current war. Patriots can also hit incoming ballistic missiles under certain conditions, but THAAD flies much higher and farther, making it the best defense against the biggest and fastest enemy missiles.
If the Americans are firing THAADs at the same rate they did during earlier strikes on Iran back in June, they should expect to expend as many as a dozen of the $15-million missiles every day. After three weeks or so, the forward-deployed THAADs could be gone.
After six weeks, all the THAADs would be gone, forcing the U.S. Army to fall back on the less-capable Patriots.
Lockheed Martin is scrambling to boost THAAD production from around 100 to around 400 annually, but the ramp-up could take years. In the meantime, the U.S. Army can’t afford to fire more than 100 THAADs a year without undermining its defenses in the Asia-Pacific region.
Pacific-based THAAD batteries protect the biggest and most vulnerable air bases U.S. forces would stage from for a war with China.
The U.S. Navy’s interceptor problem is no less vexing. The fleet has around 400 of its mainstay SM-3 interceptors, which are broadly similar to the U.S. Army’s THAADs and are optimized for striking incoming ballistic missiles.
If it even partially armed those dozen deployed destroyers, each of which has a capacity of nearly 100 missiles, the U.S. Navy may have staged half or more of its SM-3s in the Middle East ahead of the current strikes.
Raytheon produces fewer than 50 of the $10-million missiles annually, so even with a planned expansion of the production line, the U.S. fleet must shoot carefully.
A US Patriot anti-missile battery is set up at a base in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, 04 March 2003. (Photo by SVEN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images)
UKRAINE, TAIWAN IMPLICATIONS: EUROPE PURCHASES OF PATRIOTS LESS LIKELY
Further U.S. support to Ukraine is now highly unlikely in the near term. Trump and his Republican Congressional allies halted direct military aid to Ukraine early last year, but still allowed Ukraine and its European allies to purchase American weapons for Ukraine’s defense—in particular, Patriot surface-to-air missiles and other air defense assets.
Now these purchases are probably off the table. Raytheon’s Patriot production line will almost certainly be maxed out for years simply replacing the SAMs the U.S. Army is firing at Iranian ballistic missiles raining down on U.S. and allied bases across the Middle East. The shortage could even extend into the administration of whoever succeeds Trump in January 2029.
Fortunately for Ukraine, the government in Kyiv has been gradually weaning itself off its once heavy dependence on U.S. weaponry, so the consequences of the current war on Iran should be manageable.
Another risk is that, if China invades Taiwan in the next few years and Trump chooses to defend the island democracy, the U.S. armed forces may not be able to sustain a high-tech fight.
In June, American warships fired SM-3s at Iranian ballistic missiles at a rate of around seven per day. At that rate, the U.S. fleet can fight for a month before it’s down to half of its main interceptors. Would the U.S. Pacific Fleet be comfortable sailing into battle with the Chinese fleet with just 200 SM-3s spread across dozens of warships? Probably not, given how many hundreds, even thousands, of ballistic missiles the Chinese can fire in quick succession.
A brief campaign of U.S. strikes drawing only limited Iranian retaliation might be sustainable. But Trump hasn’t fully explained his objectives in Iran, raising the risk that the campaign—and Iranian return fire, which as of the time of this writing has included more than 100 ballistic missiles—will continue for days or weeks.
