US has fired 850 Tomahawk missiles into Iran - leaving some officials concerned about dwindling supply
The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in the Iran war has reportedly prompted internal talks about increasing supplies
Some Pentagon officials are concerned about the “alarmingly low” supply of Tomahawk missiles remaining in the U.S. military’s arsenal after firing 850 of the weapons into Iran, according to a report.
The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, now in its fourth week, has prompted internal talks about increasing supplies, according to The Washington Post.
U.S. officials told the newspaper that the number of Tomahawks left in the Middle East was “alarmingly low.” Another official told the outlet that the U.S. supply of Tomahawks was closing in on “Winchester,” military slang that means almost out of ammunition.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/iran-war-pentagon-tomahawks-supply-b2947023.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Raytheon salesmen would like to know your location
They're starting to look like a waste of money that we should not replenish.
That's sounds very unpatriotic, citizen. Are you a dirty commie?! /s
Sounds like Nextdoor.
Wait, how many of those do we have? I'd expect us to have at least 10,000 given how we are supposed to be the bastion of goddamn freedom. Can hardly claim to be the stalwart defender of democracy if we don't have enough ammo for at least a month.
And if we don't have ammo, maybe we shouldn't be starting wars with nations that have a military.
The pentagon has been dodging audits like fucking Neo for over 50 years.
I have a hunch that a good chunk of that trillion dollars they get every year just kind of evaporates. You know, you order 8,500 tomahawks from your Raytheon buddy, he sends 850 and pockets the difference. No one questions it because surely we’re not going to get into an extended ground conflict so who’s gonna notice.
We’re probably just like the Russians, just with better advertising and fresh paint.
Meow.
And if we don't have ammo, maybewe shouldn't be starting warswith nations that have a military.FTFY.
A good point.
Honestly, there's really no shortage of these. They're not saying we might run out, they're saying we might have to order more. It's essentially just a matter of writing a check.
The US government is insolvent and broke. Who's paying for that shit?
And yet somehow there's always money for the defense budget.
I'm not saying I like the situation, but realistically, if the US government wants more missiles, I don't think they're gonna have any trouble getting them.
So, apparently there's a term that's used in the defence industry for advanced, extremely capable, very expensive weapons: "exquisite weapons". This sounds like something out of a fantasy RPG, but it's actually the term they use in the industry to talk about these things, the Tomahawk being one of them.
So, while Iran is hitting various sites around the middle east with machines that cost about the same as a small car and are built in a basic factory, the US is spending 100x as much, building missiles in special high-tech factories using clean rooms and high end robots. Not only that, but the weapons the US is using to intercept Iran's drones cost about 100x as much as the drones they're shooting down.
We have too damn much money and not nearly enough brains.
1,5trillion has to go somewhere.
Hey now, the US has its own low-cost drone reverse engineered from an Iranian one-way attack drone.
Does that mean they'll stop building Tomahawks? Of course not, now two companies can benefit instead of one. That's 2x the military-industrial complex baby!
which was reversed engineered from a US drone originally.
Additionally, it's why GBUs exist. They are inexpensive and in wide-use by the US military.
this mostly makes me think of rimworld, tbh
Jesus... How many schools did they have??
850
Per the Wikipedia article nuclear weapons of the United states:
Do we seriously have more nukes than tomahawks??? This reporting has to be incorrect.
Nope. Mutual assured destruction was standard operating procedure. It is one reason the U.S.S.R. collapsed - they were trying to exceed our reserves.
The Soviets had more nuclear weapons than the US, but they lost the arms race and that is one of the reasons for the collapse, yes.
Well here's the thing, the article only said that our supply in the middle east is dwindling. So presumably we had about 1000 tomahawks between those two carrier groups (so I guess 500 per carrier group). I believe the US keeps 11 active carrier groups around the world, so just doing the math, that's 5500 missiles. But that's not counting any supplies held by the airforce, army or national guard (though it seems like not a very appropriate munition for the national guard, so they may not have many).
Still, I would not be surprised if the total supply in the US military is well over 5000, potentially as high as 10,000.
Tomahawk is just one weapon system. It isn't even our only cruise missile system. JASSM, LRASM, Harpoon, and SLAM are all in-service cruise missiles used by the US. And those are just off the top of my head.
If you want to get into one-way attack drones (ie, cheap cruise missiles), we have things like LUCAS as well.
This is like when a noob uses a cheat code at the beginning of the game and still loses
Invincibility cheat and then walk off the edge of the map so it doesn’t matter 🤣
AI says these cost $1.3 million each on the low end.
That's at least another billion dollars wasted on Israel that could've been spent helping Americans.
I cannot imagine there’s actually $1.3M of anything in these missiles. They’re probably a few grand and then about $1.3M of mark-up.
It's not just what's inside them. It's the entire process of making them. There are a lot of people involved that all want to be paid for their work.
Ofc the price you sell them for is higher than the cost of making them. But they're still very expensive to make.
It's a missile that you can fire from one country and hit a specific building in another country.
Can't just go out and put some Playstation parts and TNT into a tube and call it good. A million+ per missile makes sense.
As a former Gov contractor who now works for gov, yes. Price always goes up for government contracts.
Yesterday's technology today at tomorrow's prices?
Yes, and no. It can be great tech but it'll cost an extra 30% on top because Big G is paying.
Also true in government, if you don't spend the entirety of your budget that's been assigned to you, you clearly would never ever need it, so finance will take it away next year when you DID need it. So it's easier to spend the entirety every year just in case you need that amount the next year. It's dumb and annoying even as a government worker.
There is over a grand of just silver in the things at current spot prices.
They cost closer to $4m each.
Right… that’s the concern here… dwindling supplies.
Imagine a world where the US ran out of bombs.
What did the US say at the end of the war? Iran out of bombs.
Spend billons on more bombs while global economic collapse looms.
Creating jobs.
It's the only way to be sure.
That really is the best opportunity for China to take Taiwan. Wait a little bit longer until stockpiles are empty and ground troops are deployed and then strike while the USA is occupied
Why would China bother?
China is about to become what America was: #1 country, #1 economy, with oil traded in their currency, with resources available across the globe.
China's investments in Trump are about to pay off huge.
Why fuck with a winning hand by invading a small island when they can just keep doing what they're doing, and let Taiwan make semiconductors for China, and collect all the benefits of being Top Dog?
Already kinda is, it feels like.
I’m Canadian; most people here seemed extremely happy to see our PM in China making actual deals and opening up trade.
That's exactly why I am 99% sure that everything with Trump and the Republicans will eventually point back to China. That's who benefits from all the chaos, all the corruption.
Russia is a nice red herring, but China is using them and will discard them as soon as it is convenient.
This is exactly from a book of Sun Zu, sit back and watch your enemies fight with each other’s and you will win without shooting a single shot.
Do not interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake
Taiwan might be asking to join China to protect itself from perceived American aggression at this rate.
China supposedly now has a full copy of the Epstein files too.
How could they have obtained this?
hackers, they claim.
If that was true, why are they still saber rattling? Stupid dictators and bloodthirsty supporters lead to stupid wars, so I wouldn't count it out.
Look at Ukraine. Russia had already de facto annexed most of the land that they hold today. Ukraine wasn't willing to fight them to get it back. All of Russia's neighbors were too scared to join EU or NATO. Europe was dependent on Russian gas and vulnerable to Russian coercion.
Putin started the war anyways.
Four years later and hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead, and the economy is crashing. Ukraine is bombing the shit out of Russia and occupied Ukraine and trying to take it all back. Oligarchs are going poor/dying. NATO now has a much larger budget than the Russian military, arguably stronger than it ever was during the Cold War. Putin has no way out of this war, if he withdraws he probably ends up in the Hague.
If he had stopped after 2014, Putin could have kept everything, but he kept breaking the ceasefires and escalating.
Because it costs them nothing to saber rattle?
What they're doing is working, so they're going to keep doing it.
Military equipment is not cheap, nor is flying jets into Taiwanese airspace. Also if you keep telling the population that you're going to invade Taiwan, then they do kind of expect it to some extent, even if the PRC is not a democracy.
Finlandization does have some benefits for the PRC, but I would not rule out a stupid land invasion of Taiwan.
If China wasn't dealing with unknowns in their military due to corruption I think they definitely would. Still might.
You forget that Japan and Korea are invested in Taiwan's safety.
The US doesn't even formally recognized Taiwan. We were never going to enter a conventional war against a nuclear power for their sake.
*and actually now would be the worst time for them to invade. Trump is probably one of the only presidents dumb and chaotic enough to actually get into a conventional war with China. Along with Taiwan's relevance as 'the global chip factory' fading they'd be much better off waiting a few years.
**hello downvoters. general consensus among military wonks is that China would rinse the US if the US intervened in an invasion of ROC. You see how the Iran war is going? Now imagine if they had a much larger missile arsenal, ICBMs, hypersonic glide vehicles, and an actual air force. In-theater conventional war greatly favors China and the US does not have enough long range capability to change that without going nuclear which obviously precludes the whole thing to anyone sane.
Yes you are. Because they manufacture all of your microchips.
losing 60% of global microchip production (and dropping) or some Dongfeng-5Bs putting the US into the fallout universe timeline. It's not a great choice but it's a relatively easy one.
Those could have been used against russia to defend Ukraine...
That’s what, 2.5 billion taxpayer dollars. For a war taxpayers don’t want.
Fuck Trump.
They bombed a bunker months ago, now there's a bunch of tomahawk missles deployed; Is The Dept. of War getting ideas from Top Gun: Maverick? /s
Take away the /s. In the first term, Steve Mnuchin was...Treasury, I think. Anyway, he's a movie producer, on the financing side. Look up his list of credits. The things you describe sound exactly like his kinds of movies. Mnuchin was probably encouraging Trump, so he could later make a movie about it "based on a true story."
those are about 3 million each, in pre trump funds. Looks like tax paying Americans will all be emptying or wallets and cutting services to replace those now too. I hope Israel is happy with us and sends our politicians a tiny fraction of that amount in bribes.
Btw only 9000 tomahawk missiles have ever been produced in the 43 year lifespan of the tomahawk program, and at top speed we can produce 600 a year. We usually make up to 90 a year. We reportedly had between 3-4000 in our inventory.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a gun nut or at all pro war, but why do they produce multimillion dollar missiles consisting of metal, fuel and explosives for that much for a one-way use instead of using that money to prevent wars? Well, call me a sweet summer child.
Tomahawk missiles are meant to be used for high precision strikes, they're basically the missile equivalent of a 50. cal sniper loaded with AP-I rounds which is to say explosive but deadly if you want someone or something annihilated. Problem is they're using them like artillery or maybe a V-1 so of course it's gonna be fucking expensive for no reason, to go back to my previous analogy it's like using said sniper and ammo to hunt squirrels.
This is what scares me in a true protracted war with China. Imagine their production capacity. Even if our weapons are better, does it make a difference if they can build them 10x faster at 90% the efficacy?
US army internal planning and table top runs show we run out of munitions for the high-high fight in days in a war with China.
It’s a documented and very real concern.
I always thought that was the point of nuclear bombs. You can attack me and you might even defeat me but it's gonna cost you. No need to have a lot of ammunition but a few that are very hurtful.
If you kill me ill kill you right back.
Oh yeah? We just built more nukes than you we cna kill you 5 times.
Kill me 5 times? Watch this. I can kill you 50 times now lol.
50 times? Hah! Pathetic! Watch how I have the capacity to kill everyone everywhere a hundred times over!
Shit. Better build better nukes so I can kill everyone a thousand times over.
You only need a few nukes to defeat all missiles China could produce in their entire existence. Any direct hot conflict with possibility of either side's total defeat would turn into a nuclear one.
Are they doing this so they have an excuse not to help Taiwan next year?
If china get Taiwan the US is going into the stone age overnight. No president is trying to avoid this, both parties want to protect Taiwan.
Not after musk gets his super duper mega chip factory running.
And what does Krasnov's boss want?
Putin wanted Finland to stay out of NATO, look how well that worked out for him. Stupid leaders make stupid choices.
But I think NATO would probably have a coalition to protect Taiwan anyways.
Or yet another excuse of why they can't help there own citizens. "Universal health care? You know how much that would cost???"
They can just get ICE to loan them some.
Once again, comedy gold for the Kremlin.
Yes, empty those stockpiles. Don't wowwy, nothing is going to happen, I pwomice
Gweetings, China.
It’s so silly. Those were made to be used ‘surgically’: to hit specific high value targets at extended range while minimising collateral damage. If you feel the need to use 850 of them, you’ve chosen the wrong weapon system: at that point, you should be flying B52’s over whatever you want to hit. Or turn Tehran into a glass parking lot.
who males the Tomahawk and are Trump's kids long that stock?
Raytheon (RTX Corp)
Now they will print more dollars to buy some more Tomahawks and the world will bet on that dollar again. When it does this shit (USA) will collapse fast.
No more missiles until you stop bombing little girls.
USA has nothing more than Money and resource. that is perfectly fine. Anyway American taxpayer will prever to stay hungry but keep feed the army
Of Iranians or missles?
They're going to run out, and then every other country in the world will bomb the shit out of us.
Other countries won't, because we don't have spoilt children running our governments. It would be deserved, and we would be quietly glad someone gave them a slap, but we wouldn't. And let's be honest, the US would be insufferable if anything happened to them - they still bitch and moan about Pearl Harbour.
Edit: but also, as allies, even though it's an abusive relationship, we would still come to your aid as that's what we agreed to do. So we also wouldn't want you to be attacked ever as you are our friends too and also, sadly, knowing it'll be forgotten and not necessarily reciprocated if the shoe was on the other foot.
Which countries are going to bomb the US, specifically? And why would starting a war with the US improve things for those countries?
The warmongering is insane. America is going to destroy itself economically with this war. No other countries really need to get involved.
Trump is preparing the us for invasion. Invasion by Russia. Exhaust the military supplies, run the world's fuel supply dry so that tanks etc are useless and no one can come help, then Russia, still flush with oil can walk in with their remaining hardware unopposed
I'm getting poe's lawed by this comment. I genuinely can't tell if this is supposed to be funny or if this is something your median .world user is ready to accept as true.
Do they live in a world where Russia could be preparing a ground invasion of the US? Fucked if I know.
Yeah, Russia can't get into their neighbor. They lost their Navy to a country with NO NAVY. How are they going to project power into the US? However much it cost to put trump into power has returned a million fold investment. they dont have to do shit but keep investing in the incompetent ppl in the US government.
By corrupting the US government and using its assets against Russia's other enemies.
Not every power play has to be millitary. Remember that Putin was KGB and understands very well how control and manipulation work.
Russia doesn't need to invade. They already own the White House and a bunch of Congresspeople. Not as many as AIPAC, but enough.
If not, it is also gene stealer cultist MO. Can't have defense against the coming gods.
I am sad that you are making a lot sense. I am happy that I have stocked up on ammo.
How is Russia supposed to invade the US? Russia can't even take over their neighbor and Russia lost a huge portion of their Black Sea Fleet to a country that doesn't even have a navy. If they can't even do that, how do they land troops on a continent on the other side of the world, a continent protected by the world's strongest navy and air force.
Russia doesn't even have an aircraft carrier anymore...
Tactical nukes are inevitable at this point.