Revelations about munition shortages and damage to US bases in the region challenge White House and Pentagon efforts to portray the US military as invincible. Military leaders are concerned that the huge expenditure of expensive and slow-to-replace military assets leaves the U.S. unprepared against the supposed threat of China.
“The U.S. has fired more than 1,000 long-range Tomahawk missiles since the war with Iran began on Feb. 28, as well as 1,500 to 2,000 critical air-defense missiles, including THAAD, Patriot and Standard Missile interceptors,” reported the Wall Street Journal on April 23. “Wholly replacing those stockpiles could take up to six years, officials said, kicking off discussions in the administration about adjusting operational plans in preparation for any potential presidential order for the military to defend Taiwan.”
NBC reported yesterday that “American military bases and other equipment in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.”
Iranian retaliation on the first day of the war even included a successful air strike by an F-5 fighter jet–a long obsolete aircraft acquired by the then-Shah’s air force in the 1970s–on a U.S. military facility in Kuwait. Iranian attacks “struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft,” says NBC, citing sources and a report from the AEI.