Hegseth says US has enough munitions to continue Iran war 'as long as we need to'
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday sought to tamp down growing alarm that the U.S. is overtaxing its arsenal of missiles and other munitions, as American forces pressed a sixth consecutive day of strikes against Iran with no defined endpoint and no clear public accounting of what victory would require.
"We've got no shortage of munitions," Hegseth told reporters Thursday. "Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need to."
Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander for forces in the Middle East, told reporters that Iranian missile attacks have decreased 90% since the first day of the war. He added that drone attacks have fallen 83%. An Iranian drone attack was responsible for the death of six American troops in Kuwait on Sunday.
"Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation," Hegseth said.
Each missile fired is expensive and can take years to replace. The Pentagon has invested heavily in developing more munitions faster in recent years. A 2025 reconciliation bill from Congress surged $25 billion into munition procurement. In January, Lockheed Martin announced it reached a deal with the Pentagon to accelerate missile development.
In the past three days, Cooper said, American aircraft had struck nearly 200 targets deep inside Iran, including sites around Tehran.
On Thursday, he added, B-2 stealth bombers dropped dozens of 2,000-pound penetrating munitions against deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, weapons specifically engineered to destroy the kind of hardened underground facilities Iran has spent years constructing to shield its most advanced rocket systems.
The Pentagon has declined to disclose the cost of the war against Iran, but independent estimates suggest the price is steep. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has estimated that the campaign is running approximately $891 million each of the opening days of the war, a pace that would put the cost of the first four days alone at roughly $3.7 billion.
