Recent military operations in the Middle East have drained U.S. missile stocks, prompting the Pentagon to request funding for low-cost, mass-producible munitions. Failing to secure timely congressional appropriations threatens national readiness during long-term peer conflicts.
High-intensity regional conflicts are burning through stockpiles faster than American factories can replenish them, exposing a critical vulnerability in the global security environment. The Pentagon now faces an unforgiving reality: maintaining an adequate Munitions Supply requires an immediate overhaul of industrial capacity and procurement policy. Without a massive increase in mass-producible missiles, any prolonged military engagement will rapidly deplete the national supply of munitions and undermine frontline readiness.
Munitions Supply crisis
The United States produces the most technologically advanced weapons in the world, but that’s not enough to deter and win future conflicts.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are demonstrating once again that the quantity of munitions matters at least as much as their quality.
Years of insufficient defense budgets severely eroded the US defense industry’s capacity and left our military with arsenals that are dangerously small and insufficient to address growing threats.
Thankfully, the Pentagon now recognizes this reality and is attempting to quickly procure large quantities of less expensive munitions.
The question is whether Congress will provide timely and sufficient appropriations this year to meet the urgent need for an adequate supply of munitions for America’s men and women in uniform.
Dwindling Munitions Supply Strains the Military
Consider: Per a report in April, the military fired over 1,000 ship- and submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles since the war with Iran started in February.
For perspective, Pentagon documents indicate it bought only 38 of these missiles in Fiscal Year 2025.
Similarly, US forces expended over 1,100 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range cruise missiles with only roughly 1,500 remaining in Pentagon stocks at the end of April, according to another report.
Those numbers are sobering, especially considering that America’s authoritarian adversaries are engaged in broad, increasingly consequential cooperation, as we detail with our colleague Elaine Dezenski in our new book, “Axis of Aggressors: Countering the Cooperation of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.”
Last year, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine warned Congress that “China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are pursuing unprecedented levels of cooperation.” He reiterated those concerns Tuesday to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
If America lacks sufficient munitions for a conflict of a few months against Iran, why do we think we are prepared for a war that could last much longer against China?
Scaling Up the Munitions Supply
So, what’s to be done?
The United States must prioritize speed and scale, aiming for production and delivery of the largest quantity of low-cost munitions as quickly as possible.
Thankfully, the Pentagon is not sitting on its hands.
It’s attempting to transform the weapons-procurement process by focusing on industry-driven solutions, multiple vendors, greater competition, multiyear procurements that create sustained demand and private investment, flexible contracting and incentives that reward companies that deliver large quantities of low-cost, effective munitions quickly.
This month, the Pentagon announced framework agreements with Anduril, CoAspire and Zone 5 to quickly produce a new family of low-cost, air-launched cruise missiles that can precisely strike targets at long distances and that often fly close to the ground to make detection more difficult.
The five-year plan calls for 28,000 missiles, with production ramping up from 1,000 missiles next year to more than five times that by 2028.
While each missile brings different capabilities, some may cost less than 10% or 20% of the price of the Tomahawk.
Munitions Supply innovation
Similarly, the Pentagon signed a framework agreement with Castelion to manufacture its Blackbeard hypersonic strike missile at a minimum of 500 units per year.
The military is seeking funding for more than 12,000 over five years, estimated at less than $300,000 each at full-scale production.
The engineering approach with these missiles borrows directly from SpaceX: design for mass production and continuous iteration from the start.
That philosophy — producing national-security hardware at commercial speed — is the kind of cultural shift the defense-acquisition system has resisted for decades.
What ties all these initiatives together is a hard-won recognition that the mix of high- and low-cost munitions has been dangerously out of balance.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East demonstrate that an inventory of expensive long-range precision weapons cannot sustain a modern high-intensity conflict without a deep magazine of affordable, mass-producible munitions.
Securing Munitions Supply for Future Wars
Congress deserves credit for legislation last year authorizing multiyear procurement for the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program and low-cost hypersonic strike systems.
But that will mean little if Congress does not appropriate the necessary funding, and soon.
Members of Congress are right to ask questions about the administration’s plans for the war against Iran.
But delaying or even slashing desperately needed defense appropriations for munitions will only penalize our service members.
Most important, getting the munitions-cost ratio right — smaller quantities of sophisticated but expensive munitions and larger quantities of affordable ones — is a vital policy challenge.
Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say such a calculation will play a major role in determining how many of our fighters return home from the next war.