The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in the Iran war has reportedly prompted internal talks about increasing supplies
Some Pentagon officials are concerned about the “alarmingly low” supply of Tomahawk missiles remaining in the U.S. military’s arsenal after firing 850 of the weapons into Iran, according to a report.
The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, now in its fourth week, has prompted internal talks about increasing supplies, according to The Washington Post.
U.S. officials told the newspaper that the number of Tomahawks left in the Middle East was “alarmingly low.” Another official told the outlet that the U.S. supply of Tomahawks was closing in on “Winchester,” military slang that means almost out of ammunition.
This is like when a noob uses a cheat code at the beginning of the game and still loses
Invincibility cheat and then walk off the edge of the map so it doesn’t matter 🤣
those are about 3 million each, in pre trump funds. Looks like tax paying Americans will all be emptying or wallets and cutting services to replace those now too. I hope Israel is happy with us and sends our politicians a tiny fraction of that amount in bribes.
Btw only 9000 tomahawk missiles have ever been produced in the 43 year lifespan of the tomahawk program, and at top speed we can produce 600 a year. We usually make up to 90 a year. We reportedly had between 3-4000 in our inventory.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a gun nut or at all pro war, but why do they produce multimillion dollar missiles consisting of metal, fuel and explosives for that much for a one-way use instead of using that money to prevent wars? Well, call me a sweet summer child.
Tomahawk missiles are meant to be used for high precision strikes, they’re basically the missile equivalent of a 50. cal sniper loaded with AP-I rounds which is to say explosive but deadly if you want someone or something annihilated. Problem is they’re using them like artillery or maybe a V-1 so of course it’s gonna be fucking expensive for no reason, to go back to my previous analogy it’s like using said sniper and ammo to hunt squirrels.
This is what scares me in a true protracted war with China. Imagine their production capacity. Even if our weapons are better, does it make a difference if they can build them 10x faster at 90% the efficacy?
You only need a few nukes to defeat all missiles China could produce in their entire existence. Any direct hot conflict with possibility of either side’s total defeat would turn into a nuclear one.
US army internal planning and table top runs show we run out of munitions for the high-high fight in days in a war with China.
It’s a documented and very real concern.
It’s so silly. Those were made to be used ‘surgically’: to hit specific high value targets at extended range while minimising collateral damage. If you feel the need to use 850 of them, you’ve chosen the wrong weapon system: at that point, you should be flying B52’s over whatever you want to hit. Or turn Tehran into a glass parking lot.
who males the Tomahawk and are Trump’s kids long that stock?
Raytheon (RTX Corp)
Raytheon salesmen would like to know your location
Those could have been used against russia to defend Ukraine…
They’re starting to look like a waste of money that we should not replenish.
That’s sounds very unpatriotic, citizen. Are you a dirty commie?! /s
Sounds like Nextdoor.
Right… that’s the concern here… dwindling supplies.
Imagine a world where the US ran out of bombs.
What did the US say at the end of the war? Iran out of bombs.
Jesus… How many schools did they have??
850
Now they will print more dollars to buy some more Tomahawks and the world will bet on that dollar again. When it does this shit (USA) will collapse fast.
So, apparently there’s a term that’s used in the defence industry for advanced, extremely capable, very expensive weapons: “exquisite weapons”. This sounds like something out of a fantasy RPG, but it’s actually the term they use in the industry to talk about these things, the Tomahawk being one of them.
So, while Iran is hitting various sites around the middle east with machines that cost about the same as a small car and are built in a basic factory, the US is spending 100x as much, building missiles in special high-tech factories using clean rooms and high end robots. Not only that, but the weapons the US is using to intercept Iran’s drones cost about 100x as much as the drones they’re shooting down.
We have too damn much money and not nearly enough brains.
1,5trillion has to go somewhere.
Hey now, the US has its own low-cost drone reverse engineered from an Iranian one-way attack drone.
Does that mean they’ll stop building Tomahawks? Of course not, now two companies can benefit instead of one. That’s 2x the military-industrial complex baby!
Additionally, it’s why GBUs exist. They are inexpensive and in wide-use by the US military.
which was reversed engineered from a US drone originally.
this mostly makes me think of rimworld, tbh
Are they doing this so they have an excuse not to help Taiwan next year?
If china get Taiwan the US is going into the stone age overnight. No president is trying to avoid this, both parties want to protect Taiwan.
Not after musk gets his super duper mega chip factory running.
And what does Krasnov’s boss want?
Putin wanted Finland to stay out of NATO, look how well that worked out for him. Stupid leaders make stupid choices.
But I think NATO would probably have a coalition to protect Taiwan anyways.
Or yet another excuse of why they can’t help there own citizens. “Universal health care? You know how much that would cost???”
Wait, how many of those do we have? I’d expect us to have at least 10,000 given how we are supposed to be the bastion of goddamn freedom. Can hardly claim to be the stalwart defender of democracy if we don’t have enough ammo for at least a month.
And if we don’t have ammo, maybe we shouldn’t be starting wars with nations that have a military.
The pentagon has been dodging audits like fucking Neo for over 50 years.
I have a hunch that a good chunk of that trillion dollars they get every year just kind of evaporates. You know, you order 8,500 tomahawks from your Raytheon buddy, he sends 850 and pockets the difference. No one questions it because surely we’re not going to get into an extended ground conflict so who’s gonna notice.
We’re probably just like the Russians, just with better advertising and fresh paint.
Meow.
And if we don’t have ammo, maybewe shouldn’t be starting warswith nations that have a military.FTFY.
A good point.
Honestly, there’s really no shortage of these. They’re not saying we might run out, they’re saying we might have to order more. It’s essentially just a matter of writing a check.
The US government is insolvent and broke. Who’s paying for that shit?
And yet somehow there’s always money for the defense budget.
I’m not saying I like the situation, but realistically, if the US government wants more missiles, I don’t think they’re gonna have any trouble getting them.
AI says these cost $1.3 million each on the low end.
That’s at least another billion dollars wasted on Israel that could’ve been spent helping Americans.
I cannot imagine there’s actually $1.3M of anything in these missiles. They’re probably a few grand and then about $1.3M of mark-up.
It’s a missile that you can fire from one country and hit a specific building in another country.
Can’t just go out and put some Playstation parts and TNT into a tube and call it good. A million+ per missile makes sense.
It’s not just what’s inside them. It’s the entire process of making them. There are a lot of people involved that all want to be paid for their work.
Ofc the price you sell them for is higher than the cost of making them. But they’re still very expensive to make.
As a former Gov contractor who now works for gov, yes. Price always goes up for government contracts.
Yesterday’s technology today at tomorrow’s prices?
Yes, and no. It can be great tech but it’ll cost an extra 30% on top because Big G is paying.
Also true in government, if you don’t spend the entirety of your budget that’s been assigned to you, you clearly would never ever need it, so finance will take it away next year when you DID need it. So it’s easier to spend the entirety every year just in case you need that amount the next year. It’s dumb and annoying even as a government worker.
They cost closer to $4m each.
USA has nothing more than Money and resource. that is perfectly fine. Anyway American taxpayer will prever to stay hungry but keep feed the army
Per the Wikipedia article nuclear weapons of the United states:
The US holds in total 5,177 warheads, of which 3,700 are stockpiled, and 1,477 are awaiting dismantlement. Of the stockpile, 1,770 are deployed, while 1,930 are held in reserve.
Do we seriously have more nukes than tomahawks??? This reporting has to be incorrect.
Well here’s the thing, the article only said that our supply in the middle east is dwindling. So presumably we had about 1000 tomahawks between those two carrier groups (so I guess 500 per carrier group). I believe the US keeps 11 active carrier groups around the world, so just doing the math, that’s 5500 missiles. But that’s not counting any supplies held by the airforce, army or national guard (though it seems like not a very appropriate munition for the national guard, so they may not have many).
Still, I would not be surprised if the total supply in the US military is well over 5000, potentially as high as 10,000.
Nope. Mutual assured destruction was standard operating procedure. It is one reason the U.S.S.R. collapsed - they were trying to exceed our reserves.
The Soviets had more nuclear weapons than the US, but they lost the arms race and that is one of the reasons for the collapse, yes.
Tomahawk is just one weapon system. It isn’t even our only cruise missile system. JASSM, LRASM, Harpoon, and SLAM are all in-service cruise missiles used by the US. And those are just off the top of my head.
If you want to get into one-way attack drones (ie, cheap cruise missiles), we have things like LUCAS as well.
