WASHINGTON — Since the Iran war began in late February, the United States has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China, close to the total number remaining in the U.S. stockpile. The military has fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year.

The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles in the war, at more than $4 million a pop, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.

The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military’s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries such as Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say.

Pentagon Relies on Expensive Weapons

The conflict has also underscored the Pentagon’s overreliance on excessively expensive missiles and munitions, especially air-defense interceptors, as well as concerns about whether the defense industry can develop cheaper arms, especially attack drones, far more quickly.

The Defense Department has not disclosed how many munitions it used in 38 days of war before a ceasefire took effect about two weeks ago. The Pentagon says it hit more than 13,000 targets, but officials say that figure masks the vast number of bombs and missiles it used because warplanes, attack planes and artillery typically strike large targets multiple times.

White House officials have refused to estimate the cost of the conflict so far, but two independent groups say the expense is staggering: between $28 billion and $35 billion, or just under $1 billion a day.

In the first two days alone, defense officials have told lawmakers, the military used $5.6 billion of munitions.

Tough Choices Ahead

To restore the U.S. global stockpile to its previous size, the United States will have to make tough choices about where to maintain its military strength in the meantime. “At current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said this past week.

“The United States has many munitions with adequate inventories, but some critical ground-attack and missile-defense munitions were short before the war and are even shorter now,” said Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which recently published a study estimating the status of key munitions.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that “the entire premise of this story is false.” She added: “The United States of America has the most powerful military in the world, fully loaded with more than enough weapons and munitions, in stockpiles here at home and all around the globe, to effectively defend the homeland and achieve any military operation directed by the commander in chief.”

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, declined to comment on “any specific theater requirements or detail our global resource capabilities,” citing operational security.

Some Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chair of the subcommittee that funds the Pentagon, have pressed for an increase in spending on munitions production over several administrations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made that goal a top priority during his tenure.

Making things more perilous for the Pentagon, officials say, is that the Defense Department is waiting for Congress to approve additional funding before it can pay weapons manufacturers to replenish the depleted American supply. In January, the administration announced that it had secured seven-year agreements with major defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, to increase production capacity for defense systems such as missile interceptors.

In the meantime, the military is using its existing weapons supplies at steep rates to meet Central Command’s immediate needs in the Iran war. Certain munition levels are shrinking faster than others.

Long-Range Missiles Essential to Iran War

The Pentagon, for example, has committed most of its inventory of stealthy, long-range cruise missiles to the fight against Iran. These missiles, called Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, or JASSM-ER, are launched from fighters and bombers and have a range of more than 600 miles. They are designed to penetrate hard targets outside the range of enemy air defenses.

Since the war started, the military has used about 1,100 JASSM-ER missiles, which cost roughly $1.1 million apiece, leaving roughly 1,500 in the military’s inventories, according to internal Pentagon estimates, a U.S. military official and a congressional official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential combat assessments.

Tomahawks, which cost about $3.6 million each, are long-range cruise missiles that have been widely used for U.S. warfighting since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. They remain a key munition for potential future wars, including one in Asia.

“While sufficient munitions exist to wage this war, high expenditure of Tomahawks and other missiles in Operation Epic Fury creates risks for the United States in other theaters — particularly the Western Pacific,” concluded a CSIS study, which estimated the remaining Tomahawk stockpiles to be around 3,000 missiles.

Patriot Missiles Cost Nearly $4 Million Each

Patriot interceptor missiles can cost nearly $4 million each. The United States produced about 600 of them in all of 2025. More than 1,200 have been used in the war so far, according to internal Pentagon estimates and congressional officials.

Overall, the cost of the war so far is between $25 billion and $35 billion, according to a study this month by the American Enterprise Institute compiled by Elaine McCusker, a senior Pentagon official during the first Trump administration. Cancian of CSIS said in an email that he and his analysts put the cost of the conflict so far at about $28 billion.

All regional military commanders are feeling the strain of shrinking munitions stocks.

In Europe, the war has led to depletions in weapons systems critical for defending the eastern flank of NATO from Russian aggression, according to Pentagon information reviewed by The New York Times.

US Readiness Hurt in the Pacific

A problem described as serious was the loss of surveillance and attack drones. The demands of the Iran war have also curtailed exercises and training. According to military officials, this hurts the ability to mount offensive operations in Europe, as well as deterrence of potential Russian attacks.

But the biggest impact has been on troops in Asia.

Before the war with Iran started, U.S. military commanders redirected the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group from the South China Sea to the Middle East. Since then, two Marine Expeditionary Units, each with about 2,200 Marines, have been sent to the Middle East from the Pacific. The Pentagon has also moved sophisticated air defenses from Asia to bolster protection against Iran’s drones and rockets.

The redirected weapons include Patriot missiles and interceptors from the THAAD system in South Korea — the only Asian ally hosting the advanced missile defense system, deployed by the Pentagon to counter North Korea’s growing missile threat. Now, for the first time, the system’s interceptors are being moved away, according to U.S. officials.

U.S. readiness in the Pacific was hurt earlier by the Pentagon’s deployment of warships and aircraft to the Middle East after the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began in October 2023 and after Houthi militia forces in Yemen started attacking ships in the Red Sea to support the Palestinians, the officials say.

The monthlong bombing campaign against the Houthis last year — an operation the Pentagon called Rough Rider — was much larger than the Trump administration initially disclosed at the time. The Pentagon used up about $200 million of munitions in the first three weeks alone, U.S. officials said. The costs of the overall operation far exceeded $1 billion when operational and personnel expenses were taken into account, the officials added.

The U.S. ships and aircraft, as well as the service members working on them, are being pushed at what the military calls a high operating tempo. Even basic equipment maintenance becomes an issue under those grinding conditions.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan/Arash Khamooshi

c.2026 The New York Times Company