U.S. War on Iran Drains ATACMS/PrSM Arsenal, Triggers Readiness Fears

Great-power arsenals have run short before: in 1950 MacArthur’s forces rationed 105 mm shells in Korea, and in 1999 NATO ran out of precision weapons after 78 days over Kosovo. Each episode spurred an industrial surge but also invited adversary calculations about U.S. staying power. Today’s shortfall underscores two structural trends: a shift from mass fire to exquisite, million-dollar standoff munitions, and a peacetime defense base that struggles to replace them at wartime burn rates—a dilemma already exposed by Ukraine-Russia (2022-24). If production lags for the predicted three-plus years, Washington’s two-theater deterrence doctrine—against China or Russia—faces its sternest test since the late 1940s. On a century scale, the episode may mark the inflection where the United States learns, again, that technological superiority without depth of reserves is brittle—a lesson empires from Britain in 1916 to the Soviet Union in 1989 learned the hard way.