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Munitions Drawdown and the Contracts to Refill It

Modern wars are fought with precision missiles and interceptors that cost millions of dollars each and take years to build. The Iran war burned through them faster than the American factories can replace them. This page lays out how much was fired, what the Pentagon said about it, and who gets the orders to rebuild the stockpiles, paid for by American taxpayers.

How much was fired​

Fox News reported on April 24, 2026, citing an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of the 39-day air and missile campaign:

"U.S. forces used large shares of several critical munitions during the 39-day air and missile campaign, including more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 1,000 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs). Patriot interceptor use was estimated between roughly 1,060 and 1,430 missiles — more than half of the U.S. prewar inventory."

The same report estimated 190 to 290 THAAD interceptors used, "which cost about $15.5 million each"; 130 to 250 SM-3 interceptors "at roughly $28.7 million apiece"; 190 to 370 SM-6 missiles at about $5.3 million each; and 40 to 70 of the Army's new Precision Strike Missiles (Fox News, Morgan Phillips, via Owen Gregorian on X, April 24, 2026). Exact stockpiles are classified; CSIS built its figures from budget documents and reported usage.

Other accounts put the scale in production terms. An analyst noted that "In the first 96 hours of the Iran war, American and Gulf forces fired an estimated 943 Patriot interceptors," while "Lockheed delivered 620 PAC-3 MSE rounds in all of 2025" (Shanaka Anslem Perera on X, July 27, 2026). In September, the Wall Street Journal reported the military fired 70 or more Patriots in a single Iranian attack on a U.S. base in Jordan: "the U.S. military used up about five weeks of production in one day" (Dimitri Lascaris on X, September 16, 2026). The Congressional Budget Office estimated that as much as two-thirds of the entire missile-defense interceptor inventory had been used since June 2025 (Marco on X, September 23, 2026).

What the Pentagon said, and what the record shows​

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell, answering the CSIS report:

"America's military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President's choosing." ... "Attempts to alarm Americans over the Department's magazine depth are both ill-informed and dishonorable."

The President went further, denying reports that the stockpile was largely depleted and calling it "unlimited" (as reported by RT via @rbg4lif, August 8, 2026); he also vowed to jail the "leakers" who reported the depletion.

Set beside those words:

  • The same Fox article reported that Estonia and Lithuania had been told some ammunition shipments were "put on hold," and that THAAD elements had been moved from South Korea to the Middle East.
  • In September 2026, Bloomberg reported that the United States "has formally warned allies to expect delays of up to five years in key weapons deliveries," and the Pentagon's own Inspector General found the war created "strategic inventory shortfalls" and "revealed industrial base bottlenecks." Raytheon said it was "unlikely to fulfill" Germany's order for Tomahawks and Typhon launchers within five years (Marco on X, September 23, 2026).
  • In July 2026 the President halted two weeks of strikes after CENTCOM's commander concluded the limited target list was largely exhausted and the Joint Chiefs chairman warned further operations "would further deplete the interceptors protecting American forces and allies" (Perera).
  • In September 2026, the administration declined Saudi Arabia's request for strikes on the Houthis; one analysis concluded "The harder reason sits in the magazines" (@SMO_VZ on X, September 12, 2026).

The warnings the Pentagon called "dishonorable" turned out to be the Pentagon's own findings.

Who gets the orders​

  • Lockheed Martin. On January 29, 2026, a month before the war, Lockheed signed a framework agreement with the Pentagon "to quadruple THAAD interceptor production from 96 to 400 per year," with full rate reached around 2033 (Perera on X, March 7, 2026). It plans to raise Patriot PAC-3 production "from roughly 600 per year to about 2,000 by the end of the decade" (Fox News). It signed a framework to quadruple Precision Strike Missile production "in response to Operation Epic Fury in Iran," received a $4.7 billion missile production award in April 2026 (per Quiver Quantitative, as cited in a market note, May 8, 2026), and in September won an Army contract "worth up to $1.2bn" for the next Precision Strike Missile (Al Jazeera on X, September 21, 2026). It unveiled a cheaper PAC-3 variant in July 2026.
  • RTX (Raytheon). "RTX has said it will increase Tomahawk production to more than 1,000 missiles per year." One Raytheon facility in Ohio "has now been part of almost $470 million in missile work since April 2025," including a $335 million SM-6 contract (Dayton Business Journal on X, May 5, 2026).
  • Boeing. Won an approximately $2.7 billion contract for Patriot guidance systems in October 2025 (Reuters, via a Medium compilation, March 5, 2026) and has "ramped up production" of the GBU-57 bunker-buster since 2025 (Decode Conflict on X, March 8, 2026).
  • The group. The Wall Street Journal reported in June 2026 that the President was meeting defense contractors to push faster production, and that "The Pentagon has preliminary deals with Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, and Honeywell to ramp up Patriot interceptors and Tomahawk missiles, but much of the production expansion remains unfunded pending budget negotiations" (Open Source Intel on X, June 22, 2026). A reply summed up the business case: replenishment "may require years of sustained spending, which could create a long runway for major defense contractors." Under Secretary of War Michael Duffey described multi-billion-dollar multi-year deals with Raytheon, Lockheed, and Northrop for Tomahawk, THAAD, and Patriot (Special Report on X, September 25, 2026).
  • The budget. "The administration is seeking roughly $70 billion for munitions in fiscal year 2027 — a nearly threefold increase over current levels." The Navy's request alone is $22.6 billion for "over 4,600 all-up rounds" (Fox News).

Across fiscal 2025, the federal government directed "more than $183 billion in contracts to just ten companies," with Lockheed Martin at the top (Medium compilation).

Why it matters​

The contractors did not have to start the war to profit from it; the war empties the shelves and the taxpayer refills them, at rising prices and for years. Those same contractors fund the think tanks whose experts argued for the war on television (see defense money behind think tanks), and Section 219 of the 2027 defense bill folds Israel's weapons industry into the same procurement pipeline (see Section 219). And every interceptor fired at Iran is one not available to protect Americans somewhere else.

Status: Sean Parnell, Donald Trump, Michael Duffey, Shanaka Anslem Perera, and Dimitri Lascaris are alive. Nothing on this page states that any living person or named company broke a law.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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