The Pentagon is facing a “near-term risk” of running out of the most vital munitions, even as the conflict in Iran has yet to be resolved. The U.S. military has depleted the stores of “seven major types of missiles,” the Center for Strategic & International Studies warned in its recently published report.
Operation Epic Fury, the aerial campaign against Iran that began on February 28, has resulted in “high expenditures” of munitions, including the Tomahawk, PrSM, SM-3, SM-6, THAAD, and Patriot missiles.
According to the report, which also cited data from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, nearly a third of the pre-war inventory of Tomahawks had been used in the ongoing conflict. Nearly a quarter of the JASSMs, between half and two-thirds of the PrSMs, and at least half the Patriots have been fired.
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What makes this issue worrisome is that the delivery times to replenish the stockpiles could be more than three years for the Patriots, and either reach or exceed four years for the rest of the seven munitions. Replenishing the PrSM arsenal could take 64 months or more than five years!
Then there is the cost.
CSIS stated that each Tomahawk has a price tag of $2.6 million. Apart from the Tomahawk, along with the JASSM on the low end, only the Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) have a lower per-unit cost of $1.6 million, hardly a “cheap” munition. By contrast, each Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) costs $15.5 million, and the SM3 has a per-unit price tag of $28.7 million.
The PrSM is a surface-to-surface weapon that can strike enemy targets, so the Pentagon can opt to “save” it for only the very highest-value targets. The same is essentially true of the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and the RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile (ERAM) or Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), which are all offensive weapons developed for use in strike missions.
However, the MIM-104 Patriot is a mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) interceptor system that uses a high-explosive fragmentation warhead that can detonate near a target. The RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) and THAAD, as well as the new Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, are anti-ballistic missile systems designed to intercept and destroy short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Each employs “hit-to-kill” kinetic technology, meaning it destroys incoming threats by colliding with them at high speed, relying on kinetic energy to destroy the target.
The U.S. military had previously used the SM-3 to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles that had targeted Israel, and the THAADS and Patriots were also provided to Ukraine, which also depleted U.S. stockpiles.
The U.S. Air Force is seeking to buy nearly 4,300 JASSMs to build up stockpiles, but the cost could be several billion dollars.
Lower Cost Alternatives
The U.S. military does have lower cost options, a point noted by CSIS, which explained, “For ground attack munitions, available alternatives are far cheaper but with the same explosive yield. To illustrate the cost difference, a BLU-110 bomb fitted with a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit costs less than $100,000 while a Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) costs $2.6 million.”
The BLU-110 truly offers more bang for the buck, as each delivers 1,000-pound payloads.
The downside is that the gravity bomb with the guidance kit has a shorter range, which puts the “launch platforms in more danger.”
Other potential “low cost” ordnance that could be used to strike the enemy includes the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) and the Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) I and II.
The downside is that air superiority is required for extensive use of the munitions.
In Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. clearly has air superiority, perhaps even air supremacy, but that might not always be the case. Even after more than four years of fighting in Ukraine, Russia has failed to achieve air superiority and has seen several combat aircraft shot down. As a result, the Kremlin has relied on standoff weapons, fired far from the front lines.
Moreover, a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down this month, and an A-10 Thunderbolt II was lost during the rescue mission. An F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter also took significant damage during an airstrike mission against the Islamic Republic.
The Drone and Missile Threat
The U.S. military will still need to counter drones and cruise missiles, and the key issue is that the interceptors typically cost vastly more than the threat. Although it might seem that the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), with its $1.03 million unit cost, is a cost-effective option to counter a cruise missile costing roughly the same, the issue is more complex when it comes to countering a low-cost drone.
As CSIS explained, even the AIM-9X Sidewinder, which has a shorter range than the AMRAAM, is still $447,000. That explains why the U.S. military continues to explore alternative options, including laser direct energy weapons (L-DEWs) and other low-cost solutions.
For now, the Pentagon must spend millions of dollars by employing an interceptor to stop a missile costing just hundreds of thousands of dollars. The alternative is risking a warship valued at billions of dollars. That doesn’t even take into account the human element, which most would agree shouldn’t be priced.
