A Body Blow? The War on Iran and U.S. Military Readiness

Ryan Evans (0:10)

What is military readiness actually? And how has it been degraded in the US military's case due to the war against Iran? And what does that mean for US and allied interests in the rest of the world? And these are the questions that we start to grapple with in this episode with Mark Cancian of CSIS. Mark Cancian of CSIS, Stacie Pettyjohn of the Center for a New American Security, and Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute. Enjoy the show.

How do we think about how ready the US military is? We talk about readiness a lot. We mean lots of different things by that. Brad Carson wrote an article first years ago called, The Chicken is Ready to Eat, which would pun on ready means lots of things. Going around the table, how should we think about what readiness actually means?

Mark Cancian (0:55)

Well, you have to start with the question, ready for what? If you're thinking about a conflict with China, you want to bring in a variety of considerations about munitions, for example, and posture.

Something that Cuba, very different set of considerations. Most people think about it in terms of the ability for a unit to execute the missions that it's designed for. And US puts a lot of money into readiness. So on the whole, our forces are at a much higher level of readiness than most nations keep their forces at.

Stacie Pettyjohn (1:31)

I think Mark's exactly right that it is ready for what. Dick Beck's had that great book years ago, decades ago now, on readiness. And you need to think about whether you're considering the material, the people, and then sort of stockpiles of different things that they need along the way. And the big debate up until this point had been whether you're ready to deploy, that was feeding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, having the new BCTs to go in, and having sufficient readiness so that you could undertake operations that were needed right now, versus being ready to hopefully deter, but ready in case you needed to defend against a great power adversary and sort of conserving that readiness and focusing your training on high-end operations and making sure that you can conduct across that full spectrum versus the more narrow side that US military forces are often asked to undertake in lesser contingencies.

Michael Eisenstadt (2:35)

If I could broaden the aperture a little bit here and talk in terms of conceptual readiness or cognitive readiness in terms of our policymakers having the skills with regard to deterrence, with regard to interwar deterrence, with regard to escalation management that are required in order to conduct a limited war. This is something which we've actually learned quite a bit about just in the last couple of years with regard to Iran. And it seems to have gone all out the window in this current war, that things that the Israelis learned in 2024, we learned in 2025 with the Israelis, were forgotten very quickly. And it has to do with, in part, it has to do with the personality of decision-makers, tendency to engage in mixed messaging, although that's not just a foible of this current administration. This is a problem that senior decision-makers have had repeatedly, and also a tendency to focus on capabilities at the expense of credibility, and understanding how sometimes messaging that is intended for our domestic audience has an impact on foreign actors in ways that undercuts our ability to deter or compel.

Ryan Evans (3:39)

Admiral Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, was on TV yesterday, and he said, He's not at all worried about any munitions shortages or availability, and that they're prepared for any contingency. Mark, you folks especially have done a lot of path-breaking work on how we've chewed through key munitions throughout the course of this war, ever since it started earlier this year. It's hard to believe how long it's been going on actually. Do you think Admiral Cooper is... I'm not going to ask if he's lying. Do you think Admiral Cooper is being accurate here?

Mark Cancian (4:06)

If you just look at CENTCOM, I think that's fair. That is, if the war with Iran were to continue, we have enough munitions to conduct that. We looked at seven munitions that are used heavily against Iran and would be used in the Western Pacific. Overall, we've used about half, so that means we have half left. On the other hand, if you open the aperture and you look at...

Ryan Evans (4:27)

It's like the world isn't just CENTCOM, yeah.

Mark Cancian (4:29)

You look at PACOM, I think it's quite different. And we have particularly a problem with defenses against ballistic missiles. The Patriots, the THADs, those are down by 60% and there are no substitutes. So when you run out, you're out as the Ukrainians are finding out.