MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough wonders where the trillions of dollars in military capability the U.S. has bought over the past few decades went, in response to reports that the U.S. is running low on munitions after 40 days of active conflict with Iran. An analysis by CSIS of seven key munitions shows the U.S. “has enough missiles to continue fighting this war under any plausible scenario. The risk-which will persist for many years-lies in future wars.” “In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, U.S. forces heavily used the seven munitions in Table 1. For four of them, the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory. Rebuilding to prewar levels for the seven munitions will take from one to four years,” CSIS reports. “Even before the Iran war, stockpiles were deemed insufficient for a peer competitor fight. That shortfall is now even more acute, and building stockpiles to levels adequate for a war with China will take additional time.” “It’s called asymmetry,” Jim VandeHei said. “That asymmetry in warfare is now going to unfold across business, across geopolitics. You don’t necessarily need big size and might anymore.” “Because of technology, you can build a drone at $ 25,000 to $ 75,000 a pop,” he explained. “The Iranians aren’t stupid. They stockpile this. They watched the Ukrainians do it.”

JIM VANDEHEI: Remember, the central promise of this presidency is: “I’m going to focus on the working class, I’m going to tame inflation, and we’re not going to go into foreign wars.” None of those have happened. That’s not a political statement-that’s an empirical statement. Go down that list-it’s absolutely true. And that’s why he’s in the political jam that he’s in. And now his political jam is a Republican political jam. I think it’s going to be really hard to extricate yourself-even if you get out of this war. The second-order consequences of what’s happened in the Gulf and in that region-that’s going to affect oil prices for years. It’s going to affect Middle East infrastructure building for years. It’s going to affect our own economy for years. The New York Times has some strong reporting this morning-Jonathan Swan-about how much munitions we’ve blown through in the Middle East. We’ve used so much that government officials think it might be impossible for us to defend Taiwan. JOE SCARBOROUGH: Can I ask you this, Jim? How do we spend trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars on defense through the years? How do we spend more money on defense than maybe the next 14 or 15 countries on the planet-and then run out of munitions when we fight a one-month war? We can’t even fight a war against Iran for a month without getting reports that we’re running out of munitions? How does that happen? JIM VANDEHEI: The way it happens is one of the most important stories in the world today: because of technology, you can build a drone at $ 25,000 to $ 75,000 a pop. That allows the Ukrainians to fight Russia to a draw so far, and it allows Iran to be able to go to war with the United States and wreak havoc-not just on our missiles, but also on our allies. They’re spending $ 25,000 to $ 75,000 per drone. We’re often shooting at these drones-or defending ourselves-with things that take years to produce: missiles that cost millions of dollars. It’s called asymmetry. That asymmetry in warfare is now going to unfold across business, across geopolitics. You don’t necessarily need big size and might anymore. We have an amazing military. We have amazing weaponry. We have intelligence that would knock the socks off the Chinese or any other country. It just changes the equation. The Iranians aren’t stupid. They stockpile this. They watched the Ukrainians do it. And they say, We’ll stockpile a ton of low-cost drones, wreak havoc, and use asymmetry to give us power-so the next time the U.S. or Israel thinks about striking us, they won’t do it, because they’ll see the hell we can unleash in the Strait and on the world economy. JOE SCARBOROUGH: This is so important to underline. I saw in an important Washington newsletter this morning a recitation of all the remarkable military achievements. We’ve done unbelievable, extraordinary success-one, two, three, four, five, seven. And I keep going back to this: we’ve degraded the Iranians’ ability to fire missiles. We’ve degraded their range of materials to do this. It reminds me of what a CIA analyst-who knows Iran probably better than anybody in the government-told me weeks ago. He said, when I hear them talking about the percentages of weaponry they’ve destroyed during this war, it reminds me of the body count numbers we used to get in Vietnam-just not relevant. And Sam Stein, militarily, the United States did extraordinarily well in Vietnam. Militarily, the United States did extraordinarily well in destroying targets in Iraq. We’ve done extraordinarily well in Libya. Time and time again, our military has been able to do what our military’s needed to do. But translating that into political victory-translating that into achievable gains-that’s just not happening. And what Jim points out is that this Iranian regime can survive one military strike after another. They can even survive being choked off financially with a blockade. Because how much money do they need to tie up the Strait of Hormuz? It’s just like the Houthis a year ago tying up the Red Sea.

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