Foreign Media: The U.S. Is Overextending Its Future Combat Capabilities in the Conflict with Iran

Reference News Network reported on May 26 According to the Buenos Aires Economic News on May 22, during nearly three months of combat, the U.S. military has consumed vast amounts of ammunition, lost dozens of military aircraft and drones, and suffered severe damage to radar facilities and regional bases, making repairs extremely difficult. The high-cost U.S. warships have also been forced into long-term overseas deployments. Insiders reveal that prolonged duty of warships will trigger a chain of negative effects, and the U.S. military's deployment capabilities will be constrained for the coming years.

Pentagon officials revealed that as of mid-May, the total number of bombs, missiles, and air defense interceptors used in this war has reached at least 13,629. The sharp reduction in ammunition stockpiles has not only triggered domestic political issues in the U.S. but also exposed that even when facing a military with relatively weak conventional capabilities, the cost of operations remains high.

Becca Wasser, a defense affairs expert at Bloomberg's economics department, said: “The U.S. military's operational tempo is tight, and the rate of ammunition consumption is rapid. The military is already operating beyond its capacity, overextending its future military operational capabilities to respond to the current conflict. This will lead to a decrease in the U.S. ability to address various challenges in the future.”

As of now, at least 24 U.S. warships have been involved in this conflict, and the U.S. Navy is fully implementing a comprehensive blockade of all Iranian ports.

U.S. Navy vessels follow a three-year deployment, training, and maintenance planning system known as the "Optimized Fleet Response Plan." This plan stipulates a maximum duration of 7 months for a single overseas deployment, reserving time for rest to ensure that vessels can be deployed on short notice.

The USS Ford aircraft carrier was originally stationed in the Caribbean to pressure Venezuela but was later urgently redeployed to the Middle East battlefield. This $13.2 billion aircraft carrier has been on overseas duty for a total of 326 days, during which a major fire broke out in the ship's laundry, forcing it to withdraw from the combat area and dock in a Greek port for repairs.

Tom Shugart, a former commander of U.S. Navy submarines and a current researcher at the Center for a New American Security, stated: “While conducting military operations in South America, the duration of ship duty and maintenance must maintain a reasonable ratio. Operations cannot be abandoned due to maintenance planning, but excessive wear and tear will ultimately create hidden dangers, and there will be corresponding costs to pay later.” An anonymous insider indicated that the shortage of shipyard berths and a lack of specialized maintenance personnel have significantly compressed the U.S. military's ability to respond to long-term deployments and unexpected failures.

The depletion of long-range strike weapon stockpiles is even more severe. Personnel familiar with U.S. military weapon reserves stated that the U.S. has consumed about 1,100 Lockheed Martin-produced Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and 900 Raytheon Tomahawk missiles, while the annual production of such missiles is only a few hundred.

Although the U.S. has begun to increase production of various missiles, the issue of rapid ammunition consumption is highly controversial. At the beginning of the conflict, Trump claimed that the U.S. had an almost inexhaustible supply of such weapons.

Air defense interceptors, which are core equipment for countering Iranian drone attacks, are now also facing a serious shortfall. The U.S. military has launched thousands of Patriot-3 air defense missiles, but the annual production of this missile type is less than 700.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin downplayed the issue of ammunition shortages during congressional inquiries. He stated this month: “The issue of ammunition reserves has been exaggerated without basis; the actual stockpile is fully capable of meeting operational needs.”

However, according to U.S. military procurement data, restoring weapon stockpiles to pre-war levels at the current production rate will require at least $8 billion and take several years. The losses caused by the destruction of MQ-9 Reaper drones alone in this war are close to $1 billion.

Gregg Melandrino, a former U.S. Navy officer and chief researcher at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, believes that the current U.S. military's ammunition and operational equipment reserves cannot support its large-scale operational needs. Peter Layton, a researcher at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia, analyzed that the consumption of military supplies in the Iran conflict has severely weakened the U.S. military's ability for sustained operations. Here, sustained operations refer to military conflicts lasting more than a week. (Translated by Han Chao)