The United States still commands the most powerful military on Earth—but behind its aircraft carriers, advanced fighter jets and global network of bases lies a vulnerability that could severely restrict Washington’s response to the next major crisis.
America is running dangerously short of critical missiles and other munitions, according to conservative journalist David Drucker. Worse, the country’s diminished manufacturing capacity means those weapons cannot be replaced quickly—even if Congress immediately approves billions in additional spending.
The crisis has intensified as President Donald Trump’s war with Iran enters its seventh month, consuming weapons that military planners never budgeted to use at this rate. Yet Drucker argues that blaming Trump alone would obscure a much larger failure spanning decades, multiple administrations and both political parties.
“We’re running out of bullets,” he warned in a Bloomberg opinion column.
A superpower with shrinking stockpiles
Washington officials typically describe the problem as a “munitions shortage.” In practical terms, however, the military’s reserves of vital offensive and defensive missiles are severely depleted and continuing to shrink.
Those stockpiles form the foundation of American deterrence. They allow military leaders to respond rapidly to simultaneous threats, defend deployed forces and assure allies that the United States can honor its security commitments.
But if the weapons required for those missions are unavailable—or cannot be replaced fast enough—America’s enormous military power becomes less flexible.
Drucker warned that the shortage is already jeopardizing readiness and narrowing the strategic options available to the White House and Pentagon.
Trump has dismissed reports about depleted weapons as another supposed fabrication by a “treasonous” media. But Drucker argued that denial cannot manufacture missiles or reopen production lines that disappeared years ago.
Iran is accelerating the damage
Trump insists the ongoing campaign against Iran is necessary to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. Whatever the administration’s justification, the military consequences are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The conflict was not included in the original defense budget at its current scale. Continued operations in the Caribbean have created additional unplanned expenses, further squeezing the money available for rebuilding weapons reserves and modernizing the force.
Former Defense Department Comptroller Elaine McCusker, who served during Trump’s first administration, warned that the current approach is incompatible with the responsibilities placed on the U.S. military.
“This is not a way for a global leader like the United States to treat a military it expects to be able to respond to crises anywhere at any time and fight and win without question,” McCusker told Drucker.
But she also emphasized that the crisis resulted from years of decisions across different administrations and sessions of Congress.
Where the defense money goes
The United States spends vast sums on defense, raising an obvious question: How can the world’s best-funded military run short of ammunition?
According to McCusker, approximately 60 percent of the defense budget is consumed by unavoidable expenses—including military salaries, base maintenance, troop training and combat exercises.
That leaves roughly 40 percent for weapons modernization, technological innovation, equipment replacement and replenishing ammunition reserves. Unplanned military operations then consume part of that remaining money.
Even substantial new appropriations would not provide an immediate solution. Funding can place orders, but it cannot instantly produce sophisticated missiles requiring specialized facilities, trained workers and complicated supply chains.
The mistake began after the Cold War
The roots of the shortage stretch back to America’s victory over the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
With the Cold War finished, Washington reduced defense production and allowed enormous manufacturing capacity to wither. Successive presidents and Congresses—Republican and Democratic alike—failed to replace aging stockpiles at the necessary pace.
The same complacency affected military shipbuilding, leaving the country with fewer facilities and less capacity to respond when global threats multiplied.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the limitations of Western weapons production as the United States supplied Kyiv with large quantities of ammunition. The Iran conflict has placed still more pressure on an already strained system.
According to Drucker, even if Trump and Congress opened the spending floodgates tomorrow, significant quantities of new missiles might not emerge from factories for at least two years—and possibly much longer.
Congress keeps delaying the reckoning
Lawmakers from both parties understand that rebuilding the defense-industrial base will require sustained investment, long-term contracts and politically difficult choices. Yet Congress continues to delay decisive action.
That hesitation is particularly dangerous because military production cannot be expanded like ordinary consumer manufacturing. Missile factories depend on specialized components, tightly regulated materials, security clearances and a workforce with rare technical expertise.
The government must also give defense companies confidence that increased demand will last. Manufacturers are unlikely to spend heavily on new plants and workers if Washington might cancel orders after the immediate crisis passes.
The blame reaches across Washington
Trump’s Iran war may be accelerating the depletion, while his refusal to acknowledge the shortage could make it harder to address. But the fundamental blunder was built over more than three decades.
Presidents accepted shrinking production capacity. Congresses postponed modernization. Pentagon leaders relied on stockpiles designed for a less dangerous world. Both parties treated industrial readiness as a future problem—until the future arrived.
America still possesses extraordinary forces, technology and personnel. What it may increasingly lack is the ammunition required to sustain them through multiple prolonged conflicts.
That is the disturbing truth behind Washington’s historic defense failure: The United States did not suddenly run out of firepower. Its leaders spent decades assuming they would never need to replace it this quickly.
