Washington has a sensitive issue it does not want to address publicly: The nation with the highest spending on defence more than the next nine militaries combined is facing a shortage of interceptors to keep its troops and allies alive. Three people with knowledge of internal Pentagon plans and a new estimate from the Center for Strategic and International Studies now believe that there are fewer than 827 Patriots remaining in the United States stocks, as compared to about 2,200 when the latest dispute with Iran erupted. The THAAD interceptors, which are designed to destroy ballistic missiles at the outer edge of the atmosphere, have dropped below 278. Relatively speaking, those numbers, as reported, are close to the government's own estimates, which, as the closest thing that Washington is likely to confirm, are classified.

This drawdown was not a slow one. American and allied forces used up over 11,000 munitions in the first 16 days of the renewed conflict, according to the Royal United Services Institute, including some defensive interceptors fired at incoming Iranian drones and ballistic missiles. The truce had temporarily abated the flow of blood, but President Trump's recent announcement that the ceasefire is over, after the US and Saudi Arabia launched simultaneous strikes against Iranian troops in Iraq, and an intercepted Iranian 'surprise attack' on US troops in the region yesterday, has brought the arsenal back under strain. In the middle of the battle, American commanders are now making a grim calculation expending some of the shells they're taking on empty stretches of base skirts instead of using an interceptor that costs millions of dollars, to save some piece of empty desert.

The economics of that choice are stark and are not something that can just be ignored. The Patriot interceptor is more than $4 million; a THAAD interceptor costs over $12 million. Iran, in contrast, has built a large fleet of low-cost and mass produced Shahed style drones and short-range ballistic missiles that have significantly less expense associated with shooting them down. This is the same numbers game which has dogged Israel and Gulf allies for years, and can lead to a "victory" on the battlefield, but a "loss" on the bottom line. Take that conversion rate, factor in months of continuous fighting, and it all makes sense why warehouses that seemed to be in a good position early 2026 are looking bare by midyear.

This is the level of difference between this scram and all the scramers in the past, in that regard the timeline for doing something about it. Elaine McCusker, a former comptroller at the Pentagon who is now with the American Enterprise Institute, has estimated that most systems would take two to five years to replenish, which is based on the assumption of uninterrupted production lines. Her partner, retired two-star General John Ferrari, has noted a more fundamental fault: Congress hasn't authorized a single dollar targeted to replace the missiles shot since the war started. That is reflected in the delivery schedules. The Pentagon is getting about 15 new Tomahawks and 20 new Patriots per month and none of THAAD units are expected to reach this year. If that's the rate, it's a matter of years, not quarters, to catch up and every week of active fighting moves the deadline even farther away.

The defence industry has not forgotten this and is enjoying a best stretch in years, thanks to the lack of state. Lockheed Martin reported second-quarter revenue of 20.1 billion dollars, an 11-percent increase, as orders for PAC-3 and precision-strike missiles increase the division's missiles and fire-control business by nearly 20 percent to 4.1 billion dollars. It has grown the order backlog to $230.4 billion, nearly a third more than a year ago. RTX told investors it would now see full-year revenue in the range of 95-96 billion dollars, up from an earlier prediction, with its Raytheon weapons business expected to increase 18 percent to 8.27 billion dollars as Patriot, Standard and AMRAAM demand for the company rose, about seven billion dollars of it from European buyers alone. Both companies took a hit from markets, with Lockheed climbs exceeding ten percent, and RTX climbing nearly eight percent in one day. Lockheed has also promised to quadruple production of THAAD, from 96 to 400 units annually, an objective that seems like a lot of work until you realize that it remains lower than the number of new interceptors that will be delivered by 2027.

Washington's own budget signals say that officials know just what they are up against. Trump has called for a record $1.5 trillion in defence spending for fiscal 2027 and the House has already passed a version of a policy document that would allow $1.15 trillion to be spent on defence. Raising more money today doesn't guarantee more interceptors on a launcher tomorrow, though: specialised propellant supply chains, seeker components and talents are required for producing missiles, and these can't be simply scaled up by pushing the envelope on the size of a cheque. What is more troubling, however, and is repeatedly expressed by analysts like CSIS analyst Mark Cancian, is not this war but the next one. Each Patriot and THAAD that is fired at an Iranian drone off the coast of Iran is another that's missing in case of a contingency in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean peninsula, and Beijing and Pyongyang are surely monitoring the numbers as closely as any in the Pentagon. The military that is ready to fight and win against a peer competitor is using the nation's most advanced defensive armaments on a far weaker adversary, hoping that the costs do not manifest in another location first.