The US is exhausting its precision-guided missiles in the war with Iran

The precision war has a cost that rarely appears in war dispatches: the industrial capacity to replenish what is consumed. The United States has used virtually all of its long-range precision missiles — the ATACMS and Precision Strike systems — during the conflict with Iran, according to media in three regions with opposing strategic interests, which concur this week. The information, originally disseminated by Reuters and replicated by the European, Israeli and Arab press, paints a picture of material exhaustion unprecedented for the dominant superpower. This is not a war report: it is a snapshot of the strategic limit.

Why it matters

For the Spanish reader, observing an increasingly fragmented world, this news reveals that even the dominant military power has physical frontiers in protracted conflicts. Deterrence depends not only on the capacity to produce weaponry, but on the capacity to sustain its use over time. When a strategic arsenal is emptied, the global balance shifts without any treaty being signed.

The facts

US stockpiles of ATACMS and Precision Strike missiles have fallen to historic lows after virtually all were used during the war with Iran. The figure comes from a Reuters report and has been picked up by media in three distinct regions: Europe, Israel and the Arab world.

The ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) is a tactical surface-to-surface missile with a range of several hundred kilometres, designed to strike high-value targets behind enemy lines. The Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) is its successor, a more modern system with greater range, developed to gradually replace the ATACMS in the US Army's arsenal. Both systems represent the backbone of America's long-range precision strike capability in conventional conflicts.

The convergence of sources is what lends solidity to the information. Media from countries with opposing strategic interests — the Arab press, the Israeli press and the European press — have published the same fact with minimal variations. This is not a self-interested leak from a single bloc, but information that has circulated through international agencies and been validated by newsrooms that normally distrust one another.

The context of the conflict with Iran is the necessary backdrop for understanding the magnitude of the figure. The war has demanded a volume of precision fire that has tested the productive capacity of the US defence industry. Long-range missiles are complex, expensive and slow to manufacture; they are not produced on assembly lines like conventional ammunition. Each unit fired requires months of production and components that often depend on global supply chains.

What each side says

The European press, via the Kyiv Independent citing Reuters, was the first to disseminate the information with the headline that has gone around the world: US stockpiles of ATACMS and Precision Strike missiles are at historic lows after virtually all were used in the war with Iran. The Ukrainian outlet, which follows the global military balance closely because of its own conflict, frames the news as a significant data point for Western deterrence capability.

The Israeli press, via i24NEWS, has published the same fact with a slightly different emphasis: the United States has used virtually all of its long-range precision missiles in the war with Iran. The Israeli outlet, operating in a regional environment where US military capability is a direct factor of balance, underlines the strategic implication of the figure for the Middle East.

The Arab press, via Al Arabiya English, has headlined with an additional nuance: the United States has used virtually all of its long-range precision missiles during the war with Iran, according to sources. The Arab outlet, which covers the region from a different perspective to the Israeli one, attributes the information to unspecified sources but concurs on the central figure.

All three versions agree on the essentials: America's long-range precision missile arsenal is exhausted after the conflict with Iran. The differences are of emphasis, not of substance. That convergence between opposing blocs is what elevates the reliability of the fact.

What we do not know

The available information does not allow us to specify how many missiles have been used, how many remain in inventory, or what the estimated timeframe is for replenishing stockpiles. Nor is it specified whether the exhaustion affects ATACMS and Precision Strike equally, or whether one of the two systems has suffered greater attrition. The Pentagon's response is unknown, as is whether an emergency plan exists to accelerate production.

Nor do we know what immediate consequences this exhaustion will have on active conflicts or on deterrence against other actors. The available information does not allow us to assess whether other countries have perceived this weakness and whether they have modified their behaviour accordingly.

The absence of numerical data is significant: the briefing includes no inventory figures, no usage percentages, no replenishment timelines. What we know is qualitative: virtually all the missiles have been used. That phrase — vague but forceful — is all the sources permit us to assert.

The deeper reading

The exhaustion of a strategic arsenal is not a one-off event: it is a process built up over months of conflict whose consequences extend over years. The war with Iran has consumed a resource that the United States will take time to replenish, and that time is a window of vulnerability that other actors may seek to exploit.

The capacity to produce precision missiles is not infinite. It depends on specialised production lines, critical materials and a skilled workforce that cannot be improvised. Every missile fired is a missile that will not be available for the next crisis — and the next crisis always arrives.

The figure carries an additional reading for Europe: reliance on American deterrence has been tested in a conflict that was not European. If Washington's precision arsenal is exhausted in the Middle East, the capacity to respond to a hypothetical threat on NATO's eastern flank is, at least temporarily, reduced. That is a question European governments should be asking themselves, and one the Spanish press has yet to raise.

The information circulates, the blocs confirm it, and the local silence is eloquent. Meanwhile, the arsenal is slowly replenished, factory by factory, shift by shift. The precision war has revealed its paradox: the more precise it is, the faster it exhausts itself. And deterrence — that abstract concept underpinning the global order — ultimately depends on something as concrete as a missile in a silo, waiting to be fired.

Piece written and translated automatically from cross-checked sources in several countries.