Why America Is Running Out of Munitions

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**Ravi Agrawal** (0:31)
Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.
The United States is often said to have three options in its conflict with Iran. A, cut its losses and get out. B, extend the current uneasy peace until Iran caves. Or C, double down and attack harder. Now, you can come at any of these three options from an ideological place. You can have a preconceived belief or opinion. But then there is the inconvenient truth of missile math. And the facts are that the United States has used up an alarming number of munitions against Iran, and that constrains the options it has. Its missile interceptors, which are defensive, were already low in numbers. Now, because of the war, they are sharply depleted. They cost money to replace, but more importantly, also take years to build. The result is that the United States is less able to project power than it was before this war began.
The numbers and how munitions have been used up are often fuzzy. The Pentagon doesn't like to officially release all the latest numbers. So I thought I would speak to the leading expert on this issue to understand what we know, what we don't know, and what it all means. Before we get to that, I want to let you all know that we're having an Ask Me Anything episode soon. Send in questions on the website or by emailing us at live.foreignpolicy.com.
Anything on the topics we generally cover at FP is fair game. So how much has the Iran War set back US munitions? Why does it take so long to produce missiles? And how is all of this going to affect US interests worldwide? My guest today is Tom Karako, the Director of the Missile Defense Project and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Let's dive in.
Tom, welcome to FP Live.

**Tom Karako** (2:33)
Great to be with you, Ravi.

**Ravi Agrawal** (2:35)
So we're going to discuss several different types of munitions, but I just want to start with the one that seems to be the most well known, the Patriot Missile Interceptors. Just very briefly, can you explain how they work in layman's terms, why they seem to be so popular?

**Tom Karako** (2:51)
Sure. Well, they're popular because people want to be defended against missiles, and missiles have become weapons of choice globally. In fact, there's 18 nations that count themselves members of the Patriot family that operate one or another kind of Patriot missile. And so you're alluding to essentially two different kinds, Patriot Advanced Capability 2 and 3 Pack 2 is a blast frag, it explodes. Pack 3 is hit to kill, it collides with the target.
Of course, all of that is possible because some sophisticated radars detect a threat, track the threat, develop a fire control solution, and tell the missile where to fire out to and where to be at what point in time and space. It's a very sophisticated system, and that's why the demand for it is out the door, around the block from a number of different countries globally.

**Ravi Agrawal** (3:41)
And what is your understanding of how many of these the United States had before the war, which began in February, and how many it has now?

**Tom Karako** (3:50)
Yeah. So according to public statements, as you noted earlier, the Pentagon correctly does not put out exact numbers of inventory necessarily, or the numbers that have been used, that's for good reason. Having said that, according to some public statements in the budget requests, you can guess they're probably about, let's round numbers, 2,500 or so before the war.
And then some of my colleagues have estimated on the basis of open source information that probably over half of that, perhaps many as 1,200 or more have been probably expended. Those are probably for the United States. There's also, of course, a number of patriot operators in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, UAE, other folks. That, according to news reports, have also been expanding a lot of their interceptors in defending against these Iranian missiles. And when the Iranian missiles come in, you really don't have a whole lot of choice.