The U.S., after months of war with Iran, is running low on missile interceptors.
The Trump Administration’s response has been a combination of denials, threats of reprisals to leakers, and the president reportedly demanding answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the status of the missile stockpile.
President Donald J. Trump meets with his cabinet at Camp David, Maryland on Friday, July 31, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
In late July, the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that going back to war in Iran would “test” the country’s interceptor inventories.
“Diminished stockpiles may force the United States and its coalition partners to take more risks with interceptions,” said the CSIS report. “There are no good alternatives to Patriot and THAAD for ballistic missile defense. Navy ships, with Standard Missiles that can intercept such threats, generally are too far away.”
CSIS also found that the number of U.S. interceptors has dropped 65 percent since the launch of the war in Iran in February.
Per The Christian Science Monitor, the report’s author, Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, said the CSIS numbers came from public records, not leaks, despite the president’s threats to punish “treasonous” leakers.
But Cancian had a more ominous warning: “If two analysts at a Washington think tank can come up with these numbers… then the Chinese government – with tens of thousands of intelligence officials and way more sources of information – can come up with the same numbers.”
MLRS Firing Creative Commons Image
A Haaretz analysis published last week noted that the U.S. is running low on munitions, and that “its rivals smell blood.”
How To Replenish
How can the U.S. replenish its stockpile of munitions? It has begun that process by awarding new and expanded Pentagon contracts.
In late July, Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon reached an agreement on a seven-year, $53.86 billion contract to make PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) interceptors.
This deal, Lockheed said in its release, will allow the company to “supercharge PAC-3 MSE production and triple capacity by the end of 2030.” Lockheed received a smaller contract earlier in the year.
In mid-August, the Pentagon announced another pair of deals with Boeing and RTX to increase production of “key components” of Standard Missile-3 Block IB (SM-3 IB) and Standard Missile-3 Block IIA (SM-3 IIA).
“These agreements ensure our Warfighters get the munitions they need to win,” Michael P. Duffey, Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment, said in the announcement.
And as the Christian Science Monitor pointed out, the shortages will affect some of America’s allies.
In the short term, the U.S. will be less likely to help Ukraine, with its own desperate need for interceptors.
In the longer term, it could put the U.S. in a bad position, should it need to defend from an invasion of an ally by Russia or China.
Additionally, those contracts will take time to bear fruit.
How Long Will It Take?
According to a Task and Purpose report in late July that cited CSIS, it could take the U.S. as long as three years to replenish its Patriot and THAAD missile stockpiles to pre-war levels.
Much of that, however, will depend on when the war with Iran ends and how many interceptors it uses.
CSIS’ Cancian said, in that story, that the U.S. could speed up that timeline by “requiring that all new production Patriots and THAADs be delivered to the U.S., with deliveries delayed to the allies and partners.” He also said that it was conventional wisdom that the U.S. didn’t have enough interceptors for a confrontation with China- and that was before the war in Iran.
Virginia Burger, a defense analyst with the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, agreed with that estimate on the timetable.
“I would say a conservative estimate is three years,” Burger told Task & Purpose. “That is like most conservative.
In fact, I believe it will probably take a lot longer.” This is in part due to the “complex supply chains and production requirements” of those weapons.
Patriot missiles usually take 42 months to completion, while THAADs take 53 months, Burger told the outlet, although it’s possible that a way will be found to speed up the process.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
