alt Hacker News>The U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military’s readiness for future conflicts.
>The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two of the sources.
That quite a bit less of an issue than the headline implies.
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> That quite a bit less of an issue than the headline implies.
Here's a point that I ran across: these long range missiles are there to take out air defences and such (along with stealth sorties), which allows you go go in with 'regular' ordinance and non-stealth aircraft—of which there is much higher quantities and availability—in later phases.
In the early phases of the conflict you use stand-off munitions to reduce the chances of people being captured or killed.
Because Trump doesn't really have approval for this escapade (from either Congress or public opinion) these 'fancy' munitions are the ones primary being used to reduce the risk of casualties.
Now, trying to reduce casualties is not a bad thing per se, but the trade-off is that the fancy stuff is more expensive and takes longer to (re-)build-up. And what if there are other conflicts that flare up where these munitions would be useful? If they're not available do you start using piloted aircraft?
Two birds with one stone for benefit of Putin.
Likely son of Ayatollah wanted to get rid of his weak father and Putin wanted the US to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. So Putin asked Krasnov to get rid of Ayatollah and empty the stockpile of weapons.
Trump always delivers for Russia.
PrSM has been in production for only a short time, and ATACMS stocks were never high. Neither of these are the backbone of US long-range precision strike weapons. Article is misleading.