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The White House and Pentagon are pushing back hard on a wave of reporting that five months of war with Iran have left American offensive and defensive weapons stocks severely depleted.
Getting into it: CNN reported the military has burned through nearly 80% of its THAAD interceptors and about half its Patriots, with sources calling the levels “dangerously low.” Reuters and CBS News reported that “virtually all” of the Army’s stock of Army Tactical Missile Systems and Precision Strike Missiles is gone. Those are long-range offensive weapons that cost about $1 million apiece. The Center for Strategic and International Studies calculated on July 27 that just over a third of the prewar Patriot supply remains, along with about half the THAAD interceptors.
Trump’s response escalated all last week, openly denying the reports and calling them “fake news.” He said, “We have far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need,” and blamed former President Biden for giving Patriots to Ukraine. By Thursday, he was threatening prosecution of “leakers” who’ve made “treasonous” statements to media outlets about low supplies. He added, “Long term jail sentences will be sought!”
On X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the 80% figure “not true” and told CNN “shame on you.” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, “America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing.”
The White House is also denying a Washington Post report that Trump confronted Hegseth at a Camp David cabinet meeting, angry at having been told the shortage “had been fixed.” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was there, said the exchange “literally never happened” and called it a “B.S. story” shopped to multiple outlets to disparage Hegseth.
Despite all of this, the administration’s own budget requests tell a different story. It wants $95 billion for defense in fiscal 2027, another $21 billion in supplemental money earmarked for restocking, and a record $1.5 trillion for the military overall. Hegseth told Senate appropriators the war has cost $37.5 billion so far and made an urgent request for roughly $80 billion more, a request lawmakers have so far resisted. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin signed Pentagon contracts last week to triple Patriot PAC-3 production and quadruple THAAD output.
According to CSIS estimates, it will take at least three years to reach prewar levels regardless of funding.
