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We’ve returned to this topic often over the last two decades. A recent example was this back in 2022.

In 2023/24, as we saw expenditures in the Red Sea grow, we discussed the inventory of SM-3, SM-6, and missiles in general. Things were worrisome then. As we approach the one month anniversary of Operation Epic Fury, the numbers must be…well…mind-numbing.

Production of these exquisite missiles cannot be accelerated on a dime. This takes time and it takes money. The decades of rule by the cult of efficiency and the despotism of the accountancy and consulting class has left us—and most of our allies—with an almost criminally underarmed Navy.

I have not seen updated Standard Missile expenditure figures over the last month, but we have seen the numbers for our Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM).

As an old TLAM bubba, this is my comfort space. I remember the concerns 27 years ago after Desert Fox that our ~325 TLAM expenditures were “problematic”…but that is small change.

This CSIS graph should stop everyone in their tracks.

Becca Wasser from Bloomberg brings even more joy to the conversation.

…the US has only bought 322 Tomahawks in the last 5 years. If the US shot 850 in Iran + the low estimate of 250 for strikes in the Middle East and Nigeria, it is clear replenishment rates do not match expenditure rates.

Here’s the problem.

Tomahawks are prized in part because they can travel more than 1,000 miles, reducing the need to send American pilots into well-defended airspace. The heavy reliance on them in the Iran conflict will require urgent discussions about whether to relocate some from other parts of the world, including the Indo-Pacific, and a concerted long-term effort to build more, said several U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military planning.

…

The Pentagon has tracked the number of Tomahawks used with an increasing focus on what the burn rate will mean for not only a sustained campaign against Iran but for future military operations as well, people familiar with the matter said. One official characterized the number of Tomahawks left in the Middle East as “alarmingly low,” while another said that without intervention, the Pentagon is closing in on “Winchester” — military slang meaning out of ammunition — for its supply of Tomahawk missiles in the Middle East.

As a matter of fact, we put one of our ships in Winchester, and another only had a few D1 and D2 warheads left.

First of all, I don’t want everyone to become this guy.

We cannot be paralyzed from doing what needs to be done today, in fear of what might be needed tomorrow.

As one of the greatest Americans once said,

So, besides asking the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to kindly behave herself for at least a half a decade, preferably a full decade, what is to be done?

Look again at the quote above at what the TLAM offers the targeteers…and it does that without putting a human feet-dry.

Iran has a population of 93 million souls with a second-rate military. The PRC has 15X the population on almost 6X the land mass and she has a first-rate military.

In case of a general war against the PRC there will be A LOT more targets that will need to be engaged than we found this month in Iran. Just as an opening figure to argue about, let’s use population as a proxy.

850 TLAM x 15 the population, is 12,750 TLAM.

12,750 TLAM just to get you to D+30. Hell, we don’t even have that many VLS cells. There are only 11,000 or so in all navies worldwide. We also need VLS cells for defensive purposes. We don’t even have an operational way to reload VLS cells forward.

Understatement of the week: we don’t have enough TLAM, nor VLS cells.

You don’t want to know how long it would take U.S. industry to produce that many TLAM—even if we had enough VLS cells and expeditionary reload capability. We talk about a desire to be able to produce 1,000 a year at some point in the future, but we are not even close to that.

However, war must be fought. How do we engage that many targets?

We need weapons that can strike the same target set as TLAM with the same advantages that TLAM brings—or close to it.

Standoff weapons. Every factory that produces standoff weapons that can be carried by an aircraft or ship into the fight needs to put on another shift.

If we are going on a war footing, which we should, then we need to further tell the accountants and consultants to get in the back of the room: we need these weapons and their supply chains dispersed, and production facilities preferably scattered across multiple locations.

In case you have not been paying attention since 2022, it is no longer a theory that CONUS is vulnerable to attack. Every base. Every factory. I almost started listing single-point-of-failure weapons systems, but I’m not going to do the bad guys’ work for them.

IYKYK.

It isn’t just legacy weapons systems. We need to get emerging capabilities like Conventional Prompt Strike at Full Operational Capability sooner rather than later and then deployed on more platforms.

Three Zumwalt DDGs carrying a dozen each won’t cut it.

The Surface, Subsurface, and Aviation sides of the house all need long-range strike capability with standoff weapons.

TLAM, CPS, JASSM, SLAM-ER…all of them. Three shifts.

We’re not going to get 12,750+ TLAM.

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