US forces have shot down hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles in recent days, raising questions about how long US air defense stockpiles will last in a war that could go on for weeks or more.
Iran responded to the massive US-Israeli air campaign launched over the weekend with barrages of hundreds of missiles and drones targeting Middle Eastern countries that host US forces and bases.
Since the start of the war, the U.S. has “intercepted hundreds of ballistic missiles targeting U.S. forces, our partners and regional stability,” Gen. Dan Caine, the top U.S. military officer, said Monday.
These intercepts are successful – they prevented the missiles from hitting their targets – but they also come at the cost of expensive, high-tech interceptors that are in short supply.
“There is a risk that the US and its partners could run out of interceptors before Iran runs out of missiles, although that is far from certain,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank.
At the beginning of the conflict, Israel estimated that Iran had about 2,500 ballistic missiles — “almost certainly more than the combined number of ballistic missile interceptors in Israel and the United States,” Grieco said.
But the U.S. and Israel are in the hunt for launchers and storage sites, so “the race is, in short, between Iranian launchers and U.S. and Israeli attacks on the sources of those launches,” she said.
Demand is moving faster than production
Caine said Iranian drones also pose a threat, but did not give a figure for the number that had been shot down, saying only that “our systems have proven effective in countering these platforms and engaging targets quickly.”
Grieco said that while interceptors are being used on drones, it is not to the same extent as for missiles, and “the most acute shortage is with ballistic interceptors.”
The length of the conflict is a factor that affects how many interceptors are needed, and it is currently unclear how long it will last.
US officials, including Donald Trump, have hinted at a multi-week war, although the president said on Monday that “we are already significantly ahead of our time projections.”
“From the beginning we expected four to five weeks, but we have the ability to go much longer than that,” Trump said.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth had previously given various possible timelines for the conflict: “Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up. It could move back.”
Joe Costa, director of the Atlantic Council’s defense program, said that “continued conflict with Iran could severely strain the U.S. stockpile of critical air defense interceptors for China and other global priorities.”
“It depends on how effective the United States and Israel will be in neutralizing Iran’s missile and drone capabilities,” he said.
Grieco said that when it comes to interceptors, “production simply cannot keep up with demand.”
“Every theater, from Europe and the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, has an urgent need [for] more missile defense launch pads and interceptors, and the US is simply consuming them faster than it can replace them.”
