In operation after operation, the simple arithmetic of attrition is catching up. The United States is still not postured to fight and win a sustained, high-intensity conflict with inadequate purchases for decades now combined with the current state of our munitions industrial base.
During recent testimony before the House appropriations committee, Acting Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James Kilby said operations against the Houthis have strained the munitions industrial base after the New York Times published a stunning article about dwindling stockpiles of munitions.
According to the NYT, just 30 days of Operation Rough Rider resulted in American strikes on over 1,000 targets … with a cost that was “staggering”—just over one billion dollars.
More worrisome was the volume of munitions expended without any substantial shift in the enemy’s calculus to stop the punishing attacks. Indeed, “so many precision munitions” were used … that “some Pentagon contingency planners were growing increasingly concerned about overall stocks and the implications for any situation in which the United States might have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.”
Indeed a recent (and award-winning) Army War College study examined preparation for a long war against the People’s Liberation Army. A key finding was days one through 15 of the conflict expend all U.S. munitions on hand inside the Indo-Pacific theater of operations. Days 15 through 30 wiped out America’s entire inventory of precision munitions. Sadly, this is entirely plausible and even knowable.
Months two through six become scrambles in managing scarcity as logistics get better and faster and military production scales up back home and with and through allies and partners.
Preventing the next war requires planning for it deliberately now—precisely in order to avoid it. America has already run out of munitions too many times since the turn of the century in smaller and less intensive wars. There is no excuse to do so again.
Strategic deterrence suffers when adversaries see our empty magazines. China closely watches U.S. stocks of things that blow up and can hold mainland targets at risk.
One Washington wargame found PLA forces could seize Taiwan before American long-range anti-ship cruise missiles even arrive. In the Middle East, allies and adversaries alike note America’s ability—or inability—to sustain operations. If a crisis flares in the western Pacific, the U.S. could be forced to “scramble in managing scarcity” after just weeks of conflict. Every missile fired today is one less available if China or Iran acts next.
Large amounts of firepower are a critical contribution to the currency of deterrence. Without bullets, bombs, missiles, mines or rockets, our weapons systems are little more than very expensive paperweights.
Warning the military witnesses that members of Congress were all “very, very concerned,” the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), concluded:
“God forbid, if we were in a short-term conflict, it would be short-term because we don’t have enough munitions to sustain a long-term fight. We need to do what we can to accelerate that [munitions replacement] process, because we’re all very, very concerned.”
There is no substitute for mass quantities and varieties of munitions on hand. America’s military must get up-gunned, and fast.
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