The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed back on reports of shortages of both offensive and defensive weapons.
United States President Donald Trump has vowed to hunt down “leakers” after several news reports detailing a dangerous depletion of munitions stockpiles amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.
While several reports had previously documented munitions depletions since the war began on February 28, the latest reports painted a more dire picture.
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Reuters news agency and CBS News reported that the military had burned through nearly all of its offensive Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMSs) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs), which experts said could require relying on more perilous close-range and aerial attacks in the event of a renewed escalation.
A CNN report showing low levels of Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors has caused greater concern, with experts noting there is no viable short-term alternative to the air defence missiles. Replenishments of pre-war stockpiles are expected to take years.
Still, Trump on Thursday again denied that the US faced any strategic disadvantage when it came to weapons stores after five months of war.
“The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
He added that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed” and that defence contractors are “building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history”.
“The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long-term jail sentences will be sought!”
The US president did not provide further details on the claims, although experts have warned that even with an influx of funding, it will likely take at least three years to restore Patriot and THAAD interceptors to pre-war levels.
Only Japan and Germany currently have licences to produce Patriot interceptors. No other country produces THAAD interceptors.
CNN’s report, released on Tuesday, said that the US military had depleted 80 percent of the THAAD interceptors it had prior to the war and about half of its Patriot interceptors. Sources described the levels as “dangerously low”.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described the information as “not true”.
Separately, the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on July 27 calculated that, as of that date, the military had just more than a third of its Patriot interceptors left and about half of its THAAD interceptors.
Speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, one of the authors of that analysis, retired US Marine Corps colonel Mark Cancian, said current levels of interceptors are already hurting US deterrence capabilities against military powers like China.
A shortage of interceptors has also reportedly led to the military taking a more judicious approach to missile interceptions, increasing the likelihood of miscalculations, he noted. The killing of three US soldiers in an Iranian strike on a military base in Jordan on July 17 has further underscored those concerns.
“We don’t have that many left, and there are no good substitutes,” Cancian said of the interceptors. “If we run out of Patriots, then the missiles get through.”
Despite the latest rhetoric, the Washington Post on Thursday reported that Trump confronted Hegseth during a cabinet meeting at Camp David last week, accusing the Pentagon chief of misleading him on munitions shortages.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt dismissed the report as “100 percent fake news”.
