Washington — In late December, two months before the start of the U.S.-Iran war, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George warned that his service was critically short of missile defense munitions and that the shortage would last for another five years, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted George in April, while the war in Iran was underway.
George’s risk analysis appeared in the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Force Management Allocation Plan, an annual order approved by the defense secretary determining where troops and weapons will be allocated across the world, according to U.S. officials who spoke to CBS News.
He warned that the stockpile of high-altitude area defense batteries and Patriot missiles would remain strategically low through 2030. His assessment was written for the Defense Department’s plan for fiscal year 2027 and before the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli-led war with Iran, now in its seventh month.
U.S. officials who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly said his assessment stemmed from the transfer of the Patriots to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022, spending on munitions to defend Israel and the reduced capacity of the defense industrial base.
CBS News is withholding the exact percentages reported by U.S. officials for security reasons, and George declined to comment. U.S. officials say that while the United States has a large stockpile of some offensive munitions, such as Joint Direct Attack Munitions and small-diameter bombs, missile defense munitions used in Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, batteries and Patriot missile systems pose low levels of strategic risk.
The THAAD system is one of the U.S. military’s most advanced missile defense systems, designed to intercept and destroy incoming ballistic missiles during the final phase of their flight, either within or just outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The army has eight THAAD batteries. Each battery is made up of 90 soldiers who operate six truck-mounted launchers, with each truck having eight launchers. A full battery controls 48 interceptors, according to a 2025 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
The Patriot air defense system is designed to protect military installations, troops and other critical infrastructure from ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as hostile aircraft. It can confront a wider range of aerial threats at lower altitudes than a THAAD battery, but when used together they provide even more effective overlapping layers of defense against missile attacks.
The Patriot munition at a critical level is the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3, a high-speed surface-to-air interceptor designed to destroy incoming tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles by ramming them. PAC-3s can also shoot down enemy aircraft, according to U.S. officials interviewed by CBS News.
“These are the two Army munitions that would be most widely used in a conflict with China,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior defense and security adviser to CSIS. “You’re not going to use as many Javelins, for example, because the amount of ground combat will be relatively limited, even the artillery will be limited, but the air defense – the missile defense – will be huge.”
An April estimate from the Center for Strategic and International Studies showed that it currently takes defense contractors four years and five months to complete delivery of new THAAD interceptor contracts. Orders for Patriot PAC-3 interceptors have an average delivery time of three and a half years.
According to CSIS estimates, before the Iran War, the United States entered 2026 with approximately 2,300 Patriot interceptors and expended between 1,050 and 1,430 during the conflict, potentially consuming up to 61% of its pre-war stockpile. Fewer than 500 replenishment munitions are expected to be delivered in fiscal 2026.
The pre-Iran War stockpile of THAAD systems stood at approximately 355 interceptors, with the Iran War using between 190 and 290, or approximately 82 percent of its pre-war inventory, according to CSIS. No deliveries were planned for resupply in fiscal year 2026. In the current fiscal year – 2027 – the United States has requested more than 800 THAADs.
Two of the nation’s largest defense contractors – Lockheed Martin and RTX, through its Raytheon division – are involved in manufacturing these systems and their key components. They recently signed agreements to speed up production.
In January, Lockheed Martin announced a plan to quadruple THAAD production capacity, from 96 to 400 interceptors per year.
While the war with Iran has led to much faster depletion of missile defense munitions, decades of Pentagon spending decisions, a shrinking defense industrial base and successive military operations that consume weapons faster than manufacturers can replace them have contributed to the current shortages.
A U.S. official told CBS News that even if the United States could avoid spending additional THAAD or Patriot munitions in Iran or other conflicts, it would have to wait until the next presidential administration’s midterm elections — 2030 — to replenish stockpiles to the already low December 2025 levels.
Contacted by CBS News, Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said: “Claims of ammunition shortages in the United States are false. When the Fake News media irresponsibly amplifies these lies, the practical consequences are clear: Our enemies are emboldened to supply – or attack – American troops. »
He added that the United States still has “everything necessary to strike at the time and place of the president’s choosing.”
“Across multiple combatant commands,” Parnell said, “we have already executed successful operations while maintaining a full and ready arsenal to defend our people and interests.”
How ammo is used around the world
The U.S. military is divided into 11 unified combatant commands, each responsible for either a world region or a specialized military mission. For operations against Iran, US Central Command, led by Navy Admiral Brad Cooper, is in charge.
Each combatant command requires a certain number of troops and weapons. The Pentagon uses a framework known as Global Force Management to decide where U.S. troops, their units and some of the world’s most sought-after military weapons are sent.
The Global Force Management Allocation Plan, or GFMAP, is at the center of the process, defining which forces will be provided to combatant commanders, for which missions and for how long.
The plan is generally organized around the federal fiscal year. Typically, the Pentagon begins a new fiscal year with an existing plan for most of the forces expected to deploy or remain deployed over the next 12 to 24 months, rather than deciding from scratch every time a commander requests troops or weapons.
But the project is not set in stone. Wars break out, crises develop, missions end, and commanders are faced with unforeseen events that they must deal with.
For example, the commander of U.S. European Command might want more Patriots in Poland at the same time that U.S. Central Command wants the same assets in Kuwait, while U.S. Indo-Pacific Command might also need systems to deal with contingencies involving China.
There is a constant movement of troops and assets from one region to another – in one case in April 2025, Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the military had transferred a Patriot battalion from its region to US Central Command as part of the ongoing fighting with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
What led to the current shortage of weapons systems?
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, American military planners abandoned the assumption that the United States might have to fight a protracted war against another superpower, Cancian explained.
“After the Cold War, we planned to fight short-term regional conflicts against countries like Iraq or North Korea. And for those countries, we didn’t need the large stockpiles that we needed during the Cold War,” Cancian said. “We needed much smaller inventories.”
He added: “We’ve been shrinking the industrial base. There was the famous ‘Last Supper,’ which was literally a dinner that the assistant secretary of defense threw for the heads of the defense industry, and he told them there wasn’t enough money to keep you all in business, so you’re going to have to consolidate or get out of business, which they did.”
The resulting mergers reduced the number of large aerospace and defense contractors from 51 to five, according to the CSIS analysis.
Additionally, historically, Pentagon purchasing decisions have reduced spending on munitions and missiles to free up money for fighter jets, tanks and warships, while recognizing that these weapons are essential to war.
Cancian told CBS News that the consolidation of the defense industrial base has shaped an industry that produces efficiently in peacetime but is not designed to increase production.
“We removed this whole push because it was considered unnecessary. So this is where we will find ourselves when the war in Ukraine starts,” Cancian said. “And after about six months, we realized that we just didn’t have enough ammunition and equipment for a prolonged conflict.”
Under the Biden administration, there has been renewed interest in rebuilding advanced capabilities in the defense industrial base, but this would take time. As the war between Russia and Ukraine began in full force, the United States transferred approximately 600 Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine. However, not all of these weapons came from U.S. military stockpiles; some were manufactured under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative or supplied by European countries.
Additionally, the Biden and Trump administrations have used Patriot and THAAD missile interceptors to defend Israel against Iranian strikes. Six months before General George’s warning assessment, U.S. forces fired approximately 150 THAAD interceptors and nearly 80 Patriot interceptors during the Twelve Day War.
Cancian noted that the five-year timetable for returning Patriot and THAAD stockpiles to low pre-Iran war levels is based on the assumption that the production schedule remains on track – and that additional military operations do not further deplete stockpiles.
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