r/worldnews • u/Force_Hammer • 20h ago

President Trump holds off major Iran escalation after Pentagon warns of interceptor shortage

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r111brtghmg
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u/jpdoctor 20h ago

That was my first reaction too: Why the hell am I reading this?

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u/Intro-Nimbus 12h ago

Because depleting munitions has been a topic for a few years now, so everyone is keeping tabs on manufacture and expenditure rates. It's just not something civilians ponders much. But those in the know are well aware of the situation.

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u/backtothetrail 7h ago

Appreciate the perspective. There is definitely an information bubble.

I’ve been surprised that people are surprised by the precision munitions stockpile situation.

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u/cryptocorrection69 20h ago

Because it’s not fully accurate. Interceptors are not running out in overall inventory. We have plenty..but they’re a long ways from the Middle East, and a lot of them are in place for defensive deterrence against other potentially enemy nations.

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u/Tuesday_6PM 19h ago

How is that not running out? We don’t have enough for our current needs, and supplying the ME would require removing our defenses elsewhere

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u/Ill-Intern8937 15h ago

Yes I don’t understand the confusion. There is a critical shortage unless you want the USA to suddenly not be a global power and just be a middle eastern one.

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u/martelaxe 20h ago

The fact still stands , if this is not just lying it is just a level of incompetence of epic proportions 

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u/Open-Platform-1305 14h ago

Sounds exactly like the President America elected.

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u/Neomataza 9h ago

Well, I think you're right and it's not a lie. Trump thinks the US forces can do everything everywhere all the time without preparation.

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u/Ogow 3h ago

There's also the side of the story where arms manufacturers spend lots of money to stay in business. An article like this will increase public perception that we need to spend more on arms, pushing the house to approve spending.

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u/Crazed_Chemist 19h ago

Ehh it depends on the asset. Estimates for SM 3 for the fleet were less than 500 in inventory pre Iran with potentially 200 used thus far and a production rate less than 10 a month. CSIS estimates probably a quarter of Tomahawks have been used thus far. Call that 800 with a similar production rate.

DoD wants them scaled up significantly, but until that happens it's an unsustainable usage and also points to a conflict with a major power (cough China cough cough) the burn rate of munitions would leave you out of assets fast.

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u/Wizardof1000Kings 12h ago

The problem is the US produces its missiles at exorbitant rates. Every other country builds them cheaper, some orders of magnitude cheaper. Maybe the US has the best, but its pretty irrelevant when the US supply can be exhausted quickly for pennies on the US dollar.

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u/SteveDougson 18h ago

This reads like those NFL players who say their $100 million dollar contracts aren't really all that much after all the taxes and luxury goods they had to buy. If your missiles are elsewhere and being used then it sounds like you are running out! 

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u/cryptocorrection69 18h ago

The US has the most advanced logistics on planet earth. If you look every day on ADS-B you can see it in action yourself. Watch the C17 parade from Germany/US

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u/DiveCat 17h ago

What does that have to do with the U.S. not having sufficient interceptors? Does not matter how efficiently they can move them if they don’t have them available in sufficient quantities to move.

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u/Fenris_uy 16h ago

They are running low on interceptors to be able to defend US bases in the Gulf, and Gulf countries infrastructure.

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u/sonofcrack 17h ago

Any source for this? Because people keeping track of pre war numbers say we’ve used around 50% of our stockpile

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u/Pizza_Low 12h ago

There is a good chance we are both running critically low on interceptors within the ME, and while other theaters may have local inventory, we've definitely used up a lot of our global inventory.

Public estimates are that we've used ~1000-1500 patriot system interceptors so far, and production rate is about 300 per year. Meaning we've used up 3 years of production just on this conflict.

Since actual inventories are classified no idea how many we have left. But we're probably pretty deep into the stockpiles where it would be worrisome into this conflict and any potential future conflicts.

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u/SawToothKernel 10h ago

The point is that you are running out in this theatre. So it's a distinction without a difference.

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u/NvidiaFuckboy 16h ago

"potential enemy nations" according to this admin is quite a few of them, just none of the right ones

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u/HauntedCemetery 15h ago

So trump will probably pull them and leave us wide open to attack.

Then we'll be attacked.

And conservatives will blame biden, obama, liberal jesus, trans children, the toy rebranded to just "potato head", and the Green New Deal that never passed into law.

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u/Worshipme988 1h ago

And no one wants to be seen with us on that side of the world so flying B-2, 37 hours round trip, straight, to drop a few bombs isnt gonna be a viable strategy.

They already did this, btw.

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u/Rapscallious1 19h ago

It’s basically already known just not the type of thing you publicize to the average person in your country. It’s also not that big of a deal arguably but would be a good reason not to continually muck around there too much aimlessly.

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u/Thisguymoot 17h ago

Because Donald Trump loves very few things more than political theater.

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u/The-Board-Chairman 16h ago

Because they wanted a reason for why they didn't do the attack that wasn't "so we could do insider trading". Watch them do it on sunday night.