Trump administration and Democrats at odds over war's risk to US weapons stockpiles

President Donald Trump posted last week on social media that several defense contractors agreed to quadruple production of weapons "as rapidly as possible," though he did not offer details.

Questions about the nation's weapons stockpiles grew as the U.S. campaign against Iran escalates. Missile defense systems are under the most strain, experts said, with Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptors in high demand in Ukraine and Israel, respectively.

"I'm not particularly worried about us actually running out during this conflict," said Ryan Brobst, a scholar focused on U.S. defense strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "It's about deterring China and Russia the day after this conflict is over."

The U.S. uses both systems to take down Iranian missiles but U.S. officials said they struggled to stop drones launched by the Islamic Republic and would bring in an American anti-drone system proven to work against Russian drones in Ukraine. The Merops system also is cheaper than firing a missile that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars at a drone that costs less than $50,000.

Pentagon says the military has 'everything it needs'

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said the U.S. military "has everything it needs to execute any mission at the time and place of the President's choosing and on any timeline."

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin posted on social media late Friday that it agreed to "quadruple critical munitions production" and "began this work months ago." Trump and Lockheed did not offer a timetable of when the production increases would reach their target.

Some Democratic lawmakers questioned the long-term effect to the U.S. and its allies.

"We've been told again and again and again one reason that we can't provide interceptors for the Patriot system or other munitions for Ukraine is that they're in short supply," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told CNN.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters that U.S. supplies are dwindling after the military fought the Houthi rebels in Yemen and engaged in recent conflicts under the Republican administration.

"Our munitions are low. That's public knowledge," Warner said. "It will require additional funding, funding where we have other domestic needs as well."

Already in high demand

Supplies of defense interceptors are the most taxed, said Brobst, deputy director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

The THAAD system is designed for defeating medium-range ballistic missiles, while the Patriot system is for taking down short-range ballistic missiles and crewed aircraft. About 25% of the THAAD stockpile was estimated to be used defending Israel from Iran's ballistic missiles in the 12-day war with Iran last summer, Brobst said.

"These were already in very high demand and we had not procured enough before the conflict," Brobst said. "And now we've probably used, between the two of them, probably several hundred more."

The exact number of U.S. THAAD and Patriot systems is classified.

Demand for interceptors likely fell as the U.S. and its allies took out Iran's weapons' capabilities, Brobst said. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last week that the number of ballistic missiles Iran fired was down by 86% from the war's first day.

Other munitions in demand include cruise missiles and precision-guided missiles, known as "standoff" weapons, Brobst said. Their stockpiles are likely healthier, and their use probably peaked at the beginning of the war as U.S. forces hit Iran's early warning systems, air defenses and other targets.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said as much — that American forces used more "standoff munitions at the start, but no longer need to." He told reporters that they would use "500-pound, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound GPS- and laser-guided, precision gravity bombs."

The U.S. has a healthy supply of those types of weapons, which are cheaper but require aircraft to fly closer to their targets, Brobst said.

Root cause of the stockpile concerns

Brobst said the problem of not having enough advanced munitions, particularly interceptors, was around well before the war in Iran, though "this has definitely not made it get any better by using up these munitions."

"Successive administrations over multiple decades did not procure sufficient quantities of these interceptors, and when that happens, companies don't have an incentive to expand their production capacity," Brobst said, adding it takes "significant time" to ramp up production.

The administration in recent months promised to boost defense spending and speed up production, while calling on the Pentagon to call out defense contractors that underperform and insufficiently invest in building manufacturing.

Katherine Thompson, a former deputy senior adviser at the Pentagon during this Trump administration, said then-President Joe Biden diminished some of the stockpile of interceptors by sending them to Ukraine.

Riki Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said the U.S. military could shift interceptors from one part of the world to another or get them from allies if needed.