The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in the Iran war has reportedly prompted internal talks about increasing supplies
Some Pentagon officials are concerned about the “alarmingly low” supply of Tomahawk missiles remaining in the U.S. military’s arsenal after firing 850 of the weapons into Iran, according to a report.
The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, now in its fourth week, has prompted internal talks about increasing supplies, according to The Washington Post.
U.S. officials told the newspaper that the number of Tomahawks left in the Middle East was “alarmingly low.” Another official told the outlet that the U.S. supply of Tomahawks was closing in on “Winchester,” military slang that means almost out of ammunition.
Per the Wikipedia article nuclear weapons of the United states:
Do we seriously have more nukes than tomahawks??? This reporting has to be incorrect.
Well here’s the thing, the article only said that our supply in the middle east is dwindling. So presumably we had about 1000 tomahawks between those two carrier groups (so I guess 500 per carrier group). I believe the US keeps 11 active carrier groups around the world, so just doing the math, that’s 5500 missiles. But that’s not counting any supplies held by the airforce, army or national guard (though it seems like not a very appropriate munition for the national guard, so they may not have many).
Still, I would not be surprised if the total supply in the US military is well over 5000, potentially as high as 10,000.
Tomahawk is just one weapon system. It isn’t even our only cruise missile system. JASSM, LRASM, Harpoon, and SLAM are all in-service cruise missiles used by the US. And those are just off the top of my head.
If you want to get into one-way attack drones (ie, cheap cruise missiles), we have things like LUCAS as well.
Nope. Mutual assured destruction was standard operating procedure. It is one reason the U.S.S.R. collapsed - they were trying to exceed our reserves.
The Soviets had more nuclear weapons than the US, but they lost the arms race and that is one of the reasons for the collapse, yes.