The Pentagon's missing missiles

Tt's "a miracle the U.S. military has anything that blows up, ever."

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 28 July 2025

What is the Pentagon running low on?

Drones, missiles, ammunition, nearly everything. Weapons shipments have strained U.S. stockpiles, particularly deliveries to Ukraine, which burned through a year's worth of American 155mm artillery in just eight weeks in 2022, and to Israel. This month, the Pentagon paused transfers to Ukraine of Patriot missiles, precision-guided rockets, howitzer rounds, and more while it assessed inventory (though President Trump partly reversed that order). Middle East skirmishes have also eaten up material. In the $1.5 billion campaign to protect Red Sea shipping against Yemen's Houthi rebels, the U.S. fired 125 Tomahawks and 155 standard missiles and had seven Reaper drones shot down. And the Houthis are a ragtag militia compared with the real threat: China. When the Center for New American Security gamed out war with China, the U.S. fired 90% of its anti-ship cruise missiles and 80% of its land-attack weapons in less than a week. We'd better hope the next conflict is short-term, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in May, "because we don't have enough munitions to sustain a long-term fight."

Not fast enough. The defense budget is about $850 billion a year, but 22% goes to military salaries, and the biggest chunk, 39%, is for operations and maintenance. Only about 17% goes toward weapons procurement. And even if the Pentagon wanted to spend more, the U.S. industrial base has atrophied since the end of the Cold War. At this point, it "may be incapable of meeting the munitions demand created by a potential future fight against a peer adversary," the Army Science Board said in a 2023 report. Defense analyst Mackenzie Eaglen, who co-authored that report, told The Atlantic that it's "a miracle the U.S. military has anything that blows up, ever." While companies are modernizing production, the process requires new equipment and skilled workers and will likely take years to complete. Shipbuilding, too, is lagging: The Navy had some 600 ships in 1987 and 300 now.

The U.S. industry dried up. Thanks to 19th-century laws requiring that any voyage between two U.S. ports be made in a U.S. vessel, American shipbuilding was protected from international competition and lost its competitive edge. The U.S. did ramp up the building of naval and cargo ships during World War II but sold them off after the war and dismantled the shipyards. Because of high costs, red tape, and a loss of subsidies, the U.S. now produces almost no oceangoing commercial ships: just five in 2022, compared with China's 1,794. And the few military ships the U.S. has built tend to be insanely expensive. The Navy spent $22.5 billion to build three Zumwalt-class destroyers, for example, only to cancel the program because the gun on them would be too costly. Restoring U.S. shipbuilding will be a "generational project," said Jake Sullivan, national security adviser under President Joe Biden, since "we don't have the backbone of a healthy commercial shipbuilding base to rest our naval shipbuilding on top of."

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It's partly that weapons production and shipbuilding declined along with the general drop-off in U.S. manufacturing. But it's also the result of winning the Cold War. The Clinton administration swept into office in 1993 expecting to enjoy a peace dividend, and it slashed defense spending by some 15%, nearly two-thirds of which came from weapons procurement. That put many of the big defense contractors out of business, and by the end of the 1990s, the U.S. defense industrial base had shrunk from over 100 firms to just five. To this day, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, and Boeing dominate the market. Critics say this lack of competition has stifled innovation and poured defense dollars into costly and outdated weapons systems like fighter jets, guided missiles, and aircraft carriers.

Drones. The U.S. arsenal is heavy on high-tech stuff like Tomahawk cruise missiles ($2 million each), interceptor missiles (up to $28 million) and F-35 fighter jets ($100 million). But as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shown, quantity trumps quality in a protracted war. Kyiv has stayed in the fight thanks partly to its use of cheap drones that can swarm. Yet even if the Pentagon wanted to reorient around drones, its procurement process is clogged with red tape and designed for weapons systems that take 15 years to develop. "Drone innovation is happening at warp speed," said Mark D. Jacobsen, a former professor at the Air Force's Air War College, "but Defense Department acquisition is happening at industrial speed."

Yes. Production of artillery ammo has accelerated and is expected to increase fivefold this year. The big spending bill passed earlier this month added $25 billion for munitions, $29 billion for shipbuilding, and $16 billion for drones. And the Army is planning a $36 billion overhaul to equip its 10 combat divisions with 1,000 drones each and improve anti-drone defenses. To pay for that, it will halt procurement of things drones can take out, like tactical vehicles and M10 light tanks. "You've got to identify the attributes of a future force," said Gen. Mark Milley, former chair of the joint chiefs. "We are in the midst of really fundamental change here."

While the U.S. remains the most advanced military in the world, China has been adding weapons, ships, and aircraft carriers at a rate five to six times faster—and it's increasingly producing them at home rather than buying them from Russia. Since China has a manufacturing-dominant economy and plentiful raw materials, it is effectively already operating on a wartime footing, while the U.S. would need to adjust its industries and workforce if a major conflict broke out. The contrast is particularly stark at sea: Chinese shipbuilding capacity is 230 times larger, thanks largely to dual-use shipyards, and China now has the bigger navy. Many Pentagon insiders believe Beijing is planning to attack Taiwan in 2027, which could spark a war with the U.S. "They are certainly putting a lot of resources into the capabilities," says Gen. David W. Allvin, Air Force chief of staff. "Will they fight? I don't want to find out."