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/

Decided to Stop or Forced to Stop?

The US pounded Iran and was on the verge of total destruction of Iran’s political and military power and then, inexplicably, stopped attacking in favor of pursuit of a peace agreement.
 
As we’ve often noted, you don’t negotiate with an enemy, you utterly destroy them and then impose whatever surrender terms you want. 
 
Since WWII, the US has failed to pursue ultimate victory in every conflict it’s been involved in and the results have always come back to bite us.
 
Keeping that in mind, let’s change gears.
 
ComNavOps has frequently offered estimates of weapon inventory levels by examining budget documents for the preceding years.  In very brief terms, our weapons have historically had inventories in the low to mid thousands with production rates in the low hundreds.  However, that balance has been upset by the recent heavy expenditures of weapons off Yemen, around Israel, and against Iran.  In other words, our inventories are being depleted far faster than production can replenish.
 
Now, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has done exactly what ComNavOps has done and has issued a report estimating weapon inventories prior to the Iran conflict, specific weapon expenditures during the conflict, and speculation about the amount of time required to rebuild the inventories.
 
As one example, here are the figures for Tomahawk missiles.  As reported by TWZ website, CSIS estimated a pre-war Tomahawk inventory of 3100 missiles and an expenditure of 1000+ missile, thus far.[1]
 
Think about that expenditure rate and note that was against a helpless, fourth rate enemy who was being pounded by other countries and other weapons.  Now, consider how that would change against China.  We’d be expending Tomahawks at a rate of a thousand per week!  But, I digress …
 
What about Tomahawk inventory replenishment ?  It’s not encouraging.
 

Tomahawk procurement “averaged 86 missiles in the past 10 fiscal years (FY 15–FY 26), with most orders coming from the Navy,”  CSIS noted. [1]
 
 … the recent annual production rate is less than 200 … [1]

It’s worse than that, though.  A significant chunk of production is slated for sales to foreign countries, as noted below.
 

Another factor to consider are foreign military sales, with nearly 800 due to Japan, Australia and the Netherlands.[1]

So, we have a very small production capacity which is further “eroded” by deliveries to other countries.  It’s going to take many years to recover our Tomahawk inventory levels.  How much worse will this be during a war with China?  But, again, I digress …
 
The same trends hold true, to varying degrees, for all other weapons in the US military.
 
With low inventories and dismal replenishment rates in mind and returning to the first sentence in this post, we can now legitimately ask whether the seemingly inexplicable pause on the verge of total victory was due to some [misguided] desire for a premature peace or due to having reached a state of weapons depletion that became unacceptable given the constant threat of war with China and the need to maintain a “sufficient “ stockpile of weapons.  In other words, did we choose to stop or were we forced to stop by low weapon inventories?  Did we hit the minimum “safe” inventory levels and had to stop?
 
There’s no way to know the answer but logic suggests that we stopped because we reached a point where we felt we couldn’t expend any more weapons without depleting our inventories to unacceptable levels.  If this is the case, then all the talk of the US being ready and willing to resume attacks is just public relations propaganda for the masses and Iran is in no real danger of further heavy, sustained attacks and that would certainly change the negotiation strategies on both sides.
 
What do you think?  Decided to stop or forced to stop?
 
 
Note:  This is not a post about the “rightness” of the Iran strikes, just the military aspects of those strikes.  Political comments will not be allowed.
 
 
 
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[1]The War Zone website, “Severity Of America’s Depleted Advanced Weapons Stockpiles Detailed In New Report”, Howard Altman, 28-May-2026,
https://www.twz.com/news-features/severity-of-americas-depleted-advanced-weapons-stockpiles-detailed-in-new-report

Our Navy For The China War

ComNavOps has discussed various aspects of what our naval force structure should be but it’s generally been in isolation rather than presented as a grand overview.  This has sometimes made it difficult for people who haven’t been following the blog closely to understand how the individual components relate and where they fit in the overall force structure.  I think it’s time to begin presenting the overall picture.  One way to do this is to examine the naval force structure we’ll need to fight China and win.  Of course, we lack an explicit military strategy which is what we really need to do a detailed analysis and presentation but we can still generate a pretty good picture just by looking at the typical types of naval operations that will be needed.
 
With that in mind, here are some of the naval operations that will be required in the China War and the specific force needed to meet those requirements.
 
Tomahawk Strikes – We will need massive, very long range, cruise missile strikes against Chinese bases, industrial facilities, etc.  The easiest and most survivable way to accomplish this is via submarine.  We need a moderate sized SSGN force.  The handful of Virginia Payload Module equipped Virginia class subs with their 40 cruise missiles is simply insufficient and inefficient compared to the 154 missiles carried by a single Ohio class SSGN.  It takes 4 Virginias to equal the missile load of a single Ohio SSGN.  Let’s recall that the Tomahawk strike on the Syrian airbase in response to the chemical weapon attack used 70+ missiles and was only a partial strike on a small, undefended base.  Any serious strike against any substantial, defended target is going to require hundreds of missiles.  Trying to mass and coordinate a dozen Virginias is much more difficult than using two or three Ohio SSGNs.  We simply must build more SSGNs.
 
We also need a new cruise missile.  The Tomahawk is old, slow, non-stealthy, and has limited capabilities.  The attrition rate among Tomahawks in a peer defended attack will be substantial which will require much greater numbers of missiles to achieve the desired result – numbers we don’t have in inventory.
 
Our surface ships will have to participate in Tomahawk strikes and the Burke is our only cruise missile shooter.  In order to get our Burkes into launch position, they will have to be escorted.  In a role reversal, the escorts will be carriers.  The carriers will provide the aircraft portion of a strong, layered defense in addition to the Burke’s own AAW capabilities.
 
Air Force Protection – The Air Force is going to be busy launching constant, very long range B-2/21 bomber strikes and will need protected air corridors to the extent possible.  Carriers will have to provide temporary, mobile, air superiority to create protected transit lanes.  This will require long range air superiority fighters with very large weapon loads.
 
Anti-Surface Superiority – The Navy will need to establish surface superiority – total domination, actually – to enable free movement of submarines, unhindered by enemy ASW forces, free movement of carrier forces, transport of supplies, at-sea fleet logistic support, etc.  Since carriers can’t be everywhere and will have higher priority tasks, this will require independent (independent of carrier support) surface groups tasked with eliminating Chinese surface forces and capable of operating, at least initially, with minimal or no air support.  These surface groups will need extensive organic small UAV capability for local situational awareness, a long range (200 miles or so), stealthy anti-ship cruise missile, and heavy naval guns for those close range, unanticipated naval encounters that are all too common in naval warfare.
 
ASW – Arguably, the most important aspect of our naval operations will be our submarine activities.  To do this successfully, we need to provide the maximum amount of ASW support.  We need to attack enemy subs and ASW assets at the source (factories, supplies, bases) and at sea, as they operate.  All of the source attacks will, of course, be on the Chinese mainland and all the operating attacks will be inside the first island chain.  We need to be able to penetrate the A2/AD zone, find those assets, and destroy them.  This leads back to a long range strike capability (Tomahawk or, ideally, a Tomahawk replacement) and the ability to operate near or inside the first island chain using surface groups.
 
Logistics Convoys – Resupply convoys from the US west coast will have to transit to Pearl Harbor and beyond and will require ASW/AAW escort.  A typical escort group should include small ASW corvettes and a single Burke AAW destroyer.
 
Air Superiority – The one absolute we count on, operationally, is that the Chinese will make a Taiwan invasion the initial action of any war.  Assuming we intend to contest that, a Guadalcanal-like battle will ensue with the Chinese invasion fleet on the west side of Taiwan and US naval forces on the east.  Carriers will provide the local air support over Taiwan and will attempt to establish air superiority over the island and the Chinese fleet – no easy task.  Again, this demands a pure air superiority fighter for our air wings.
 
Mine Warfare – The Chinese reportedly have hundreds of thousands of mines and we have no useful mine countermeasures capability.  Offensively, on our part, the Chinese are contained by the first island chain and should be bottled up by mining the relatively narrow passages out of the chain.  However, we have little to no useful mining capability as measured by the ability to lay thousands of mines in a very brief period of time.  A sub or airplane laying a couple dozen mines at a time is not combat-useful.
 
 
Conclusion
 
This is beginning to tell us what our fleet structure should look like and what kinds of weapons we need.  THIS … this is how you build a fleet – from an analysis of needs not a desire to pursue isolated technology for its own sake.
 
We can see what we need and now we need to look at our current force structure, see what’s useful, see what’s useless, see what’s missing, and recognize what we need to begin acquiring on an urgent basis.
 
So much of what we have, and are actively acquiring, has little or no use in a war with China.
 
Of note, what naval capabilities are conspicuous by their absence from the discussion?  That’s right … amphibious assaults and unmanned assets.  There is simply no strategic need for assaults and no tactical need for unmanned assets, at least at their current level of capability.
 
To summarize,
 
Not Needed: 

• amphibious ships
• F-35
• F-18
• Zumwalt
• Ford
• LCS
• unmanned assets

 
Needed: 

• new cruise missile
• Simpler, cheaper aircraft carriers
• new air superiority fighter
• SSGNs
• 8” gun ships / 16” battleships
• new electronic warfare aircraft, both air-to-air and air-to-ground optimized
• true destroyer
• Burke replacement
• mine countermeasure ships and equipment

 
There you have it … the naval force we should be procuring for the war with China.  It’s noteworthy that pretty much everything we currently have is not needed and everything we need is non-existent and, worse, we have no plans to develop/acquire any of the missing items.
 
So what is the Navy working to acquire?  Unmanned sail boats, a generic do-everything aircraft that will do nothing well, more Burkes, tiny cargo/landing vessels for the Marines, AI-powered everything, and more Fords.
 
I’ll put it as plainly as possible:  What we have, we don’t need and what we need, we don’t have.

Red Sea Weapon Expenditure

The War Zone website has an article offering the first glimpse into weapon expenditures in the Red Sea against the Houthis.  As stated by head of Naval Surface Forces, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, here are the weapon expenditures:
 

• 120 SM-2 missiles
• 80 SM-6 missiles
• 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles (combined, for some unknown reason)
• 160 rounds from five-inch guns

 
Total = 220 missiles
Total = 160 shells
 
CIWS was not mentioned although at least one example of CIWS use has been documented and acknowledged by the Navy.
 
Against this expenditure, the Admiral claims “more than 400” targets were engaged.
 
 
Elementary arithmetic shows that if the Navy’s 380 total munitions fired destroyed “more than 400 targets”, that’s a kill ratio (pK) of greater than 1.0 !!!!!  In other words, every Navy munition killed its target and many killed more than one target.  That’s amazing.  That’s incredible.  That’s unbelievable.  No, seriously, that’s not believable.  In fact, it’s blatantly wrong.
 
The admiral continues his unbelievable statements with,
 

“We’ve done the analysis with what we used to shoot in World War II, and we’re at about two rounds per incoming missile,” McLane said.[1]

We didn’t engage missiles in WWII so I have no idea what he’s talking about.  Aerial targets in WWII required thousands of rounds per hit so, again, I have no idea what he’s referring to.
 
Further, the good admiral undoubtedly is not including 5” shells in his statement of analysis as 5” guns have a near-zero chance of hitting a missile.  So, subtracting out the 5” shells, that means the Navy’s 220 missiles destroyed more than 400 targets for a pK of 1.8 or almost two targets destroyed by each defensive missile fired.  That’s just totally absurd, of course.
 
Setting all that aside, the admiral claims that two ‘rounds’ (which I assume to mean missiles) were used per engagement which would conform to the Navy’s standard ‘shoot, shoot, look’ tactic.  That means that the 220 missiles could have engaged only a maximum of 110 targets not more than 400.  That also assumes that every engagement worked and that would so greatly fly in the face of all historical defensive missile performance as to be flat out unbelievable.  The pK’s throughout history have been uniformly in the 0.01-0.25 range not 1.0-2.0.
 
Now, to be fair, the admiral wasn’t offering a detailed engagement analysis;  he was just providing weapon expenditures and likely threw out a ballpark number of targets just to provide context.  I don’t think he was lying or even being intentionally misleading.
 
I can readily imagine that some of the 400 targets were engaged by aircraft whose weapons (Sidewinders, presumably) weren’t included in the Navy’s ship weapons expenditure although that would mean that even fewer targets were actually engaged by ship missiles and that would significantly lower the pK.
 
We know that 5” guns are notoriously inaccurate (recall the Vincennes incident where some one hundred rounds were fired with zero hits) so the 160 shells fired were probably directed at just a few targets.
 
Clearly, this scant bit of information the admiral provided is not useful in analyzing weapon performance, only total expenditure and even that has gaps in the information since Sidewinders, CIWS, and RAM, among others, were not mentioned.  While the presumed pathetically poor quality and performance of the attacking missiles would result in better pK’s than historically found, I’m certain that the pK is nowhere near 1.0 and, indeed, the admiral’s own claim of two rounds per engagement disproves the apparent pK.  Unfortunately, until the Navy provides some detailed performance data, we can only speculate.
 
The only valid conclusion from the admiral’s statements is that we are on the wrong side of the cost curve … big time!  We’re using $2M-$4M missiles (two at a time!) to shoot down thousand dollar drones and cheap missiles.
 
This simply reinforces the common sense conclusion that you deal with attacks not by defending but by destroying the source of the attacks.  Perhaps the new administration will take a different view of the Red Sea actions than the previous administration.  We’ll have to wait and see and, in the meantime, we’ll continue to bleed money, deplete our missile inventories, and risk our ships while waiting for the inevitable leaker that gets through.
 
 
 
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[1]The War Zone website, “Navy Just Revealed Tally Of Surface-To-Air Missiles Fired In Ongoing Red Sea Fight”, Geoff Ziezulewicz, 14-Jan-2025,
https://www.twz.com/news-features/navy-just-disclosed-how-many-of-each-of-its-surface-to-air-missiles-it-fired-during-red-sea-fight

Weapon Selection Case Study

The Republic of Stupidia (formerly the Kingdom of Idiotonia) has been considering which of two competing weapons it should acquire.  Here’s a brief description of them:
 
1. Surface to Surface HARE missile
 

• Guidance – combined GPS, terrain following, semi-active radar homing, laser guided, optical with mid-course guidance from any platform anywhere in the world
• Targeting Sensor – combined electro-optical, infrared, infrared imagining, microwave, LIDAR, active radar, library image matching with individual rivet target selection
• Terminal Maneuver – infinite maneuvering through subspace with interdimensional terminal popup
• Networking – ‘on the fly’ spontaneous networking creating a mobile weapons cloud network automatically integrating with all regional networks for up to the nano-second data linking
• Range – intercontinental with planned upgrade to interstellar
• Speed – 70% lightspeed
• Warhead – hyperfusion with dark matter enhanced antimatter core and selectable high explosive, fragmentation, or shaped charge modes
• Cost – four million quadtrillion dollars (2024 $) each
• Production Rate – one per century

 
 
2. Surface to Surface TORTOISE  missile
 

• Guidance – inertial navigation
• Targeting Sensor – active radar
• Terminal Maneuver - none
• Networking – none
• Range – 1000 miles
• Speed – cruise Mach 0.7, terminal sprint Mach 2
• Warhead – TNT
• Cost – $50,000 each
• Production Rate – 1000 per week

 
 
Update Result:  Stupidia chose the HARE missile and subsequently lost the war against the neighboring godless heathens of Commonsenseica due to the one missile per century production rate and the HARE’s cyber vulnerability discovered by a teenager in Commonsenseica who was trying to program a video war game and wound up inadvertently taking control of the HARE missile.
 
 
 
Think this is silly?  Let’s take a look at what the US Navy is actually doing.
 
The US Navy is looking at a new anti-ship missile as described below
 
AGM-158C LRASM (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile)
 

• Guidance – jam resistant GPS, Inertial Navigation, data link for mid-course guidance and updates
• Targeting Sensor – Infrared thermal imaging with image reference library, passive RF, EO, automatic scene/target matching recognition with AI software guidance for target selection, passive electronic support measures (ESM), data-link for off-board real-time electronic picture of the enemy battlespace provided by other assets, on-the-fly missile-to-missile networking for data sharing and attack coordination
• Networking – on-the-fly missile-to-missile networking for data sharing and attack coordination
• Range - >200 nm
• Speed – subsonic
• Warhead – 1000 lb WDU-42/B HE blast fragmentation penetrator
• Cost – $3M+ each
• Production Rate – something on the order of 100 per year

 
 
Does the LRASM sound eerily similar to Stupidia’s HARE missile with its attendant high cost, complexity, and very poor production rates? 
 
Now consider what a non-existent, theoretical missile based on ComNavOps’ (K.I.S.S.) principles might look like:
 
Non-existent, Basic Missile
 

• Guidance – inertial navigation
• Targeting Sensor – active radar
• Networking – none
• Range – 1000 miles
• Speed – cruise Mach 0.7, terminal sprint Mach 2
• Warhead – high explosive
• Cost – $50,000 each
• Production Rate – 1000 per week

 
Does that sound eerily similar to the TORTOISE missile with its attendant simplicity, low cost, and ease of production?
 
So, which one is the Navy pursuing?  Yeah, the LRASM HARE. 
 
All four of our LRASM missiles should be finished with production in time for the coming war with China and I expect they’ll work just as well as the other weapons we’ve sent to Ukraine.
 
Are we selecting the right weapons?  TORTOISE or the HARE?

US Weapon Failures in Ukraine

How often have you heard someone say, sure, previous weapons of this *fill in the blank” type weren’t successful but this new generation will be because it has new and improved *fill in the blank* technology?  Plus, the manufacturer claims *fill in the blank*.  And, how often has ComNavOps flatly stated that all systems will significantly underperform in actual combat regardless of the new and improved, miracle technology they’re built on?  Most of you have your own favorite, pet weapon/sensor system that you’re convinced will be a world beater … but you’re wrong.
 
Well now, courtesy of Ukraine and our giveaway weapons transfers, we have some actual combat performance to look at for various weapons.  The Daily Caller website has a fascinating article about several US weapons that have been provided to Ukraine and have been found to significantly underperform compared to claims.  Here they are with quotes from the article: [1]
 
 
Abrams Tanks 

Ukraine has withdrawn some of the U.S. M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks from the front lines after Russian drones destroyed five of the heavy Western tanks it fought for months to obtain …
 
Droves of Russian surveillance and hunter-killer drones have been able to detect and pursue the tanks more quickly than expected.

 
Excalibur Artillery Shells 

Excalibur precision artillery rounds initially had a 70% efficiency rate hitting targets when first used in Ukraine. However, after 6 weeks, efficiency declined to only 6% as the Russians adapted their electronic warfare systems to counter it.

 
Guided Multiple-Launch Rocket System (GMLRS)
 
Russian electronic warfare has successfully redirected the Guided Multiple-Launch Rocket System (GMLRS), another long-range precision munition off its planned course, according to reports.
 
 
Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb 

It didn’t work for multiple reasons, including [electromagnetic interference] environment, including just really the dirt and doing it on ground …

Switchblade 300 Drone 

The first weapon that showed itself vulnerable to Russian electronic warfare was the Switchblade 300 …

 
According to the article, the common thread in most of these is that Russian electronic warfare (EW), which includes GPS spoofers, has proven effective at disrupting the weapons guidance by redirecting them away from their intended targets.
 
To be fair, the military has belatedly recognized, to some degree, that earlier GPS guided weapons are, indeed, vulnerable to EW and have been incorporating multiple guidance methods in more recent weapons.  Ominously though, this suggests that the majority of our current weapon stocks, being older, are of questionable effectiveness in the face of peer enemy EW and other countermeasures.
 
This demands that we begin instantly testing all our weapons under realistic EW conditions to see which work and which don’t (probably all of them!).  The military, however, steadfastly refuses to conduct rigorous, realistic testing which is why the Ukraine findings are coming as a surprise to the military.
 
Equally disturbing should be the realization that each of these weapons was pronounced a miracle for the ages and passed all tests with flying colors … … … and yet they’ve failed in combat.  This demonstrates the uselessness and simplicity of our so-called testing.
 
Now, this doesn’t mean that these weapons can’t be fixed and improved.  Most probably can … now that we know what’s wrong with them.  However, what about the rest of our weapons that haven’t been tested in combat or under realistic conditions?  What’s wrong with them?  It’s guaranteed that they have problems but we just don’t know what, yet.  I guess China will let us know when we use them and they fail.  Of course, that will too late but, at least, we’ll finally know.
 
 
 
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[1]Daily Caller website, “The US Sent Billions In Military Aid To Ukraine. Many Weapons Are Massively Underperforming”, Micaela Burrow, 3-May-2024,
https://dailycaller.com/2024/05/03/ukraine-aid-weapons-russia-tactics/

2024 Weapons Procurement Increase

As we’re all well aware, the US military has been hemorrhaging weapons in the form of transfers to Ukraine.  Inventories for many weapons are critically low.  It should, therefore, be safe to conclude that next year’s (2024) weapons procurement quantities should be massively increased over 2023, right? 
 
On top of that, the Navy has publicly stated that China will invade Taiwan within the next couple of years so that is, obviously, going to trigger a massive increase in weapons procurement for 2024 as we gear up for a peer war, right.
 
I’m guessing we’re going to be seeing many thousands of additional missiles budgeted for 2024, right?
 
Let’s see just how big the procurement increases are for some common weapons.  The table below shows the 2023 and 2024 procurement quantities.[1]
 

 
So, with a peer war looming and depleted inventories due to Ukraine, the Navy is ordering 218 fewer weapons than last year.  Do I really need to add any more commentary to this post?
 
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[1]“Highlights of the Department of the Navy, FY 2024 Budget”, p.2-9

Carrier Aircraft Land Attack Weapon Ranges

Many people still believe that carrier aircraft constitute a land attack strike force.  This is incorrect.  Let’s see why.

 

Any attacking asset must be able to survivably overcome layered defenses consisting of both surface to air missiles (SAM) that can range out to a few hundred miles and land based defending aircraft that can range out to several hundred miles.  Thus, a survivable launch point must be further out than the defensive range, meaning a launch point several hundred miles from the target. 

 

Obviously, an aircraft with free fall, gravity bombs cannot survivably and successfully penetrate to the required one mile launch range.  Thus, in order for carrier aircraft to conduct a survivable, successful land attack strike, they must have weapons with ranges greater than several hundred miles.  Every extra mile that the aircraft has to penetrate the layered defenses in order to reach an inadequately short range launch point increases the risk and decreases the likelihood of success.

 

The following table lists the ranges of common carrier aircraft strike weapons.[1, and various Wikipedia entries]

 

 

Weapon	Range, miles
AGM-158D (alt. AGM-158B-2) Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile – Extreme Range (JASSM-XR)a	1200
AGM-158B Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile – Extended Range (JASSM-ER)b	575
AGM-158A Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM)	230
AGM-84H/K Standoff Land Attack Missile – Expanded Response (SLAM-ER)	170
AGM-88 HARM / AARGM	92
AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW)	80
GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB)	69
GBU-31/32/35/38/54 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)	15
AGM-65E/F Maverick	12
AGM-179 Joint Air to Ground Missile (JAGM)b	5
Hydra 70 2.75” rockets	2
GBU-10/12/16 Paveway Laser Guided Bombs	1
Mk 80 series free fall bombs	1
CBU series cluster bombs	1
M61A1/A2 Vulcan 20mm cannon	0.3

 

^a Developmental, does not yet exist

^b Not yet fully in service

 

 

 

The table makes it clear that the Navy does not operate weapons with sufficient range to keep the launch aircraft out of range of land based SAMs and intercepting aircraft.  It might be possible to safely and successfully attack lightly defended targets but major, well defended targets will have layered SAM defenses and nearby air bases supporting intercepting aircraft.

 

Another issue is the weapon carrying capacity for carrier aircraft.  For example, the F-18 Super Hornet can carry several smaller – meaning shorter range – weapons (acknowledging that every weapon carried reduces the aircraft’s flight range due to weight and drag) but only a couple of the larger weapons.  While publicity photos may show an aircraft decked out with every weapon the Navy has, an F-18 can only, practically, carry two JASSM on a realistic mission.  Other hard points are occupied by fuel tanks and defensive air-to-air weapons and even those are minimized in the interest of not negatively impacting the aircraft’s range more than necessary.  Thus, with two weapons per aircraft, it would require a strike force of, say, fifty aircraft just to mount a minimal strike of 100 weapons.  Recall, that the US used around sixty Tomahawks to strike a small, undefended Syrian air base in 2017 and only targeted a portion of the base (see, "Syrian Tomahawk Strike").  A realistic strike on a major, defended base would require something approaching two hundred missiles or more.  That would require 100+ strike aircraft (neglecting escort, EW, SEAD, etc. aircraft) which represents around five carrier air wings worth of strike aircraft under any realistic combat scenario.  The point is that the large, longer range, weapon density is so low as to nearly preclude carrier aircraft strikes even without consideration of enemy defenses and aircraft survivability.

 

One or Two Large Weapons is a Full Load

As I’ve often stated, the role of a carrier, today, is to escort and provide protection for the Navy’s true strike assets which are Tomahawk-launching Burke destroyers with their thousand mile range cruise missiles. 

 

 

 

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[1]https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/FA-18EF-Super-Hornet

FY22 Weapon System Costs

For informational purposes, following are some Gross Weapon System costs taken from the Navy budget documents[1,2] for FY2022.

 

 

Ship Program[1]	Unit Cost
Columbia SSBN	$15.0B
Ford CVN	$12.8B
Virginia SSN	$3.5B
Burke DDG	$2.4B
Constellation FFG	$1.1B
John Lewis T-AO (Oiler)	$0.7B

 

 

Of course, the ship costs are only partial costs.  For example, the Ford cost is simply the Congressional cost cap number.  Billions of dollars more have been racked up on the Ford trying to complete elevators, fix EMALS and AAG, making warranty repairs on items that were delivered damaged (main turbine generators, for example), and completion of construction items that were deferred when the Ford hit its cap limit.  Those funds are coming from unknown sources and account lines.  The Ford’s true cost is somewhere in the $15B+ range.

 

 

Weapon Program[2]	Unit Cost	Qty
Tomahawk	$2.07M	60
AMRAAM a	$1.7M	122
Standard (type unspecified)	$4.8M	125
JASSM	$1.5M	25
LRASM	$3.4M	48
NSM	$1.7M	34
Mk48 Torpedo	$2.7M	58
Sidewinder	$485,000	178
Small Diameter Bomb II	$227,000	180
RAM	$930,000	100
Joint Air to Ground Missile	$303,000	164
Hellfire	$63,000	120

 

^a from 2021; none procured in 2022

 

 

One concerning aspect is the very small procurement quantities of many of the weapon system programs.  For example, when the war with China comes, we’ll need thousands of anti-ship missiles, right?  We’re procuring 34 of the small Naval Strike Missiles per year and 48 of the larger, mainstay LRASM missiles.  Can we increase our procurement from a few dozen per year to the thousands per year that we’ll need?  It seems unlikely.  We could, conceivably, double (triple???) production but that would still leave us thousands short of what we’d need.  If a factory is producing at a rate of dozens per year, they’re not going to have the capacity to suddenly increase production by a factor of 50x or so.  What are we going to do to achieve that kind of instantaneous production capacity increase?  What’s our plan?  We don’t have a plan, as far as I know.  I’ve never heard any discussion of industrial production plans for wartime.

 

Anyway … this summary is just intended to give us a quick, concise list of some costs to help inform our weapon system discussions.  Hope this helps!

 

 

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[1]Department of Defense, Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget Estimates, Justification Book Volume 1 of 1, Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy, May 2021,

https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Documents/22pres/SCN_Book.pdf

 

[2]Department of Defense, Department of Defense, Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget Estimates Volume 1 of 1, Weapons Procurment, Navy, May 2021,

https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Documents/22pres/WPN_Book.pdf