And we've advertised it to the entire world. And we've destroyed our economy. And we've further isolated ourselves from the world, culturally, politically, and economically.

Good job everyone with the voting. All those people voted for "let's make things universally worse for everyone except billionaires in America".

I have no idea if this is true or not. If it is it shows a new level of incompetence for Hegseth and the current administration and clear hypocrisy in their messaging of 'america first'. It was ridiculous that we started the war believing it will be over in a weekend, but this is a mistake the US has made many many times before so to say this administration is different is silly. Then Hegseth allowed vaccine mandates to go away because no military in history has ever be harmed by disease. Now we (possibly) have depleted strategic munitions with essentially no strategic gain? This is a teenager's view of how to run/use the military. No understanding of history. No understanding of history (medical reediness or basic military tactics of the danger choke points), no understanding of the present (understanding Iran's likely responses and resolve or how vulnerable our bases and allies in the region were and are) and no understanding of the future (depleting strategic stockpiles of munitions without understanding what 'strategic stockpiles' means). We are idiots for even remotely tolerating such utter incompetence.

It's a good job their allies will defend them then if their ammo is low - this isn't sarcasm, it's the point of NATO, but hey if Trump still wants to pull out of that alliance...

Same way Russia ran out of missiles 3 years ago?

To no farking effect - Iran is still as bellicose as ever.

There are several conclulsions you can draw from all this:

1. The US has been strategically and militarily defeated by Iran and this has been clear since at least April to anyone who was paying attention and has achieved none of its objectives. More [1];

2. Continued use of so-called "stand off" weapons confirms that the US has been unable to achieve air supremacy over Iran and use gravity bombs. The article mentions this but doesn't really explain the implications; Reaper drones have been lost in large numbers. Air sorties are limited to also firing stand off weapons, mostly. One reason for this is an Iranian developed weapons system of loitering missiles that the US has designated as 358 and 359 missiles [2];

3. The US is spending an unprecedented amount of money on a war it has already lost that nobody wants. In some ways this mirrors the Nixon-Kissinger plan to bomb Cambodia until morale improves. Nobody wants to admit defeat. But wars are good for business. Some people are getting incredibly wealthy off all this. Munitions are the ultimate product. You use them once and then have to buy them again, often at $1M+ apiece;

4. This is the real story of American oil dependence over rewnewables. Nobody goes to war over a solar panel [3];

5. The article also mentions the drastically low inventory levels of missile interceptors (eg PAC-2, PAC-3, THAAD). This is in part why several US bases in the Gulf have been effectively destroyed and abandoned because the military cannot defend them. Iran is using very cheap weapon systems, particularly the Shahed drone, and can produce them in much higher numbers. Shooting down a $20k drone with a $1-4M missile does not scale;

6. This is going to rewrite Gulf politics as the promise of the American security-for-oil guarantee has shown to be a paper tiger. This is going to force a change for Gulf countries;

7. For all the complaining about the JCPOA, this administration has for absolutely no reason kicked the hornet's nest and the price of ending this war is going to be far, far higher. That will include (IMHO) an end to economic sanctions, unfreezing of Iranian assets, weakening of the petrodollar, compensation for Iran in the hundreds of billions and a concession that Iran can and will charge tolls for transit of the Strait of Hormuz in concert with Oman. Well done, everybody, the system works.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRAtD7iAgwY

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wMoKLuL8Jc

[3]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...

What a fucking joke.

there is a lot of money to be made, building more of them :(

The article is about the Army (not the Navy or Air Force for example)