How the Iran War is Draining U.S. Military Ammo: A Deep Dive into Costs and Readiness

Translation result.

The New York Times reported on April 23 that the conflict with Iran has sharply depleted U.S. stocks of advanced precision munitions, including key missiles, and that the drawdown has eroded readiness in Asia and Europe to deter potential adversaries such as China and Russia.

According to U.S. administration and congressional sources cited by the NYT, since launching the campaign dubbed “Operation Magnificent Fury” U.S. forces have fired roughly 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles known as the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile–Extended Range (JASSM-ER), leaving about 1,500 in inventory.

The JASSM-ER is a roughly 1,000-kilometer-range missile built to penetrate hardened targets beyond enemy air-defense envelopes. Each round costs about 1.6 billion KRW (approximately $1.2 million).

U.S. forces also fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles, each costing roughly 5.3 billion KRW (about $4.0 million) — roughly ten times the typical annual peacetime buys.

The campaign began with an unannounced U.S. and Israeli strike on Iran on Feb. 28. A cease-fire was announced in the pre-dawn hours of April 8, and the fighting stopped.

In a March 27 report released before the cease-fire, the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), citing the Washington Post, estimated U.S. forces had used about 850 Tomahawks in Operation Magnificent Fury and that remaining Tomahawk stocks were likely in the low thousands.

CSIS warned that while there is enough ammunition to conduct the current campaign, the heavy expenditure of Tomahawks and other missiles raises risks in other theaters — particularly the Western Pacific.

The Tomahawk has been a widely used U.S. weapon since the 1991 Gulf War.

More than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles have been expended so far — each approaching 5.9 billion KRW (about $4.425 million) — about twice last year’s total production of roughly 600.

Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) surface-to-surface missiles have also seen combined usage exceeding 1,000 rounds, driving inventories to alarmingly low levels.

With global munitions stocks severely drawn down, the Pentagon has rushed missiles and bombs from forces in Asia and Europe to the Middle East.

The financial toll of the Iran campaign is substantial.

The White House has not provided an official total, but two independent think tanks — CSIS and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — estimated in early April that the conflict had cost 41 trillion–52 trillion KRW (approximately $30.75 billion–$39.0 billion) and that daily costs approached 1.5 trillion KRW (around $1.125 billion).

Pentagon officials told members of Congress that the ammunition expended in the first two days cost roughly 8.3 trillion KRW (about $6.225 billion).

The NYT cautioned that restoring U.S. munitions stocks to previous levels will force difficult trade-offs in how regional forces are maintained.

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “At current production rates, it could take us years to replenish what we’ve expended.”

Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior adviser at CSIS, added, “The U.S. has ample stocks of many types of munitions, but several key ground-attack and missile-defense munitions were in short supply before this campaign and are now even more strained.”

The redeployment of assets from the Asia-Pacific region is particularly notable.

The U.S. moved the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group from the South China Sea to the Middle East and shifted roughly 4,400 Marines from two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) that had been positioned in the Pacific.

The U.S. also transferred interceptors from the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system deployed in South Korea to the Middle East.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt dismissed the NYT report as fundamentally false, saying, “U.S. weapons and ammunition stockpiles, at home and abroad, remain more than sufficient to defend the homeland effectively and to carry out any military operation the commander in chief directs.”