US air defence interceptor stocks under strain after Iran missile barrages

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburb of Haret Hreik today. Photo / AFP

United States forces have shot down hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles in recent days, raising questions about how long American air defence interceptor stocks will last in a war that could continue for weeks or more.

Iran responded to the massive US-Israeli air campaign launched over the weekend with barrages of hundreds of missiles and drones against countries in the Middle East that host American forces and bases.

Since the start of the war, the US has “intercepted hundreds of ballistic missiles targeting US forces, our partners and regional stability”, General Dan Caine, the top US military officer, said.

Those intercepts are a success – they prevented the missiles from striking their targets – but they also come at the cost of pricey, high-tech interceptors that are in short supply.

“There is a risk the United States and its partners could run out of interceptors before Iran runs out of missiles, though it is far from certain,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre think-tank.

At the beginning of the conflict, Israel estimated Iran had some 2500 ballistic missiles – “almost certainly more than the combined ballistic missile interceptor totals of Israel and the United States”, Grieco said.

However, the US and Israel are hunting for launchers and storage sites, so “the race is, in short, between Iranian launchers and American and Israeli strikes on the sources of those launches”.

Demand outpacing production

Caine said Iranian drones also pose a threat but did not provide a figure for the number that had been shot down, only saying that “our systems have proven effective in countering these platforms, engaging targets rapidly”.

Grieco said that while interceptors are being expended on drones, it is not to the same degree as for missiles, and “the most acute shortage is with the ballistic interceptors”.

The length of the conflict is a factor affecting how many interceptors will be needed, and it is currently unclear how long it will last.

US officials, including President Donald Trump, have referred to a multi-week war, though the President said today that “we’re already substantially ahead of our time projections”.

“From the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that,” Trump said.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth had earlier given various possible timelines for the conflict: “Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up. It could move back.”

Joe Costa, director of the Atlantic Council’s defence programme, said that “sustained conflict with Iran could severely strain US stocks of critical air defence interceptors for China and other global priorities”.

“It depends on how effective the US and Israel will be in neutralising Iran’s launch capability of missiles and drones,” he said.

Grieco said that when it comes to interceptors, “production simply cannot keep pace with demand”.

“Every theatre, from Europe and the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, has an acute need [of] more missile defence launchers and interceptors, and the United States is simply consuming them faster than it can replace them.”

- Agence France-Presse