Weapons Shortage

Newsmax/Reuters has reported that the US Army has used up most of its inventory of long range, precision missiles.
 

The U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military's readiness for future conflicts.[1]
 
The missiles are principally the Army's surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used "virtually all" of these weapons, according to two of the sources.[1]

Bear in mind that this is not authoritative and I have no way of verifying this.  That said, it is certainly plausible and I have no reason to doubt it.  We’ve discussed this issue for the last few years so it should not be a surprise to readers or the military and yet, as we have noted, the military has made no great effort to drastically ramp up weapons production until just very recently and even that has been half-hearted.  Every flag officer in every service should be fired for this state of affairs, if for no other reason (and there are plenty of other reasons).
 
Dereliction of duty aside, this also reinforces ComNavOps long time call for a movement away from expensive, difficult to produce, smart weapons in favor of massive quantities of “dumber” weapons that can be produced faster and cheaper.  That doesn’t mean we abandon smart weapons.  They’re useful, without a doubt, but they should not be the foundation of our weapons, as is currently the case because it’s simply not possible to produce them in sufficient quantity for an affordable price.  The handful of hypersonic missiles we can produce in a year (if we actually had a deployable hypersonic missile!) simply can’t match the effect of tens of thousands of 16” battleship shells (if we actually had a battleship!).
 
Less smart, more dumb!
 
 
 
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[1]Newsmax website, “US Has Used 'Virtually All' of Its Long-Range Precision Missiles During Iran War”, 4-Aug-2026,
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/us-missile-stockpile-iran/2026/08/04/id/1264981/