Or it may not, your call.
From Responsible Statecraft, August 7:
We crunched the numbers taking into account existing stockpiles, public info on interceptors used, and new orders
Historic levels of air defense missiles were expended by U.S. Navy ships in the Middle East in defense of Israel and in protection of Red Sea shipping since October of 2023. This led Admiral James Kilby, Naval Operations acting chief, to testify in June that their ship-launched air defense interceptors — SM-3s — are being expended at an “alarming rate” in defense of Israel.
But just how alarmed should we really be?
To determine this we need to know how many missiles the U.S. had in its inventory prior to October of 2023, how many missiles were expended since then, and how many new missiles have been produced since the beginning of 2024 up through June of 2025.
First, the Navy released a report on how many standard missiles were expended from October 2023 to December 31, 2024 that allows us to make a reasonable guesstimate of how many standard missiles were used to defend Red Sea shipping against the Houthis in first six months of 2025 for a total from October 2023 of 168 SM-2s, 17 SM-3s and 112 SM-6s.
Meanwhile in 2024, Israel suffered two major attacks from Iran: 120 ballistic missiles in April and 180 ballistic missiles on Oct 1. Additional details revealed in this April USNI article, combined with the minimum number of interceptors launched per U.S. Navy interception, allows us to estimate that a total of 24 missiles were expended by a total of four different Arleigh Burke destroyers in 2024 to supplement Israel’s ballistic missile defense: let's say 12 SM-3s and 12 SM-6s.
To come up with an educated guesstimate of how many standard missiles were used to defend Israel during the 2025 12-day war, we will rely on a few plausible assumptions, with the overarching one being that Israel burned through many of its own interceptors in 2024.
This is what presumably led the U.S. Navy to increase the number of Arleigh Burke Destroyers protecting Israel from two in 2024, to five in 2025. We will also assume the destroyers tasked with protecting cities and military facilities many miles inland, were stocked with more than the normal loadout of missiles capable of intercepting ballistic missiles at long range, i.e. SM-3s and SM-6s.
Hence, for the purpose of this analysis, each the of the five destroyers would be loaded out with 30 SM-3s, 40 SM-6s, with the balance of their 96 vertical launch tubes filled with a mix of quad packs of ESSMs, Tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAMs), ASROCs, and of course SM-2s. This is far more SM-3s than the 4 -8 SM-3s these destroyers would normally carry, but given their tasking, it seems reasonable.
Using the above assumptions, and while reserving some for ship defense, the Navy would have collectively launched an estimated 130 SM-3s (though at least one report based on a U.S. official has that number at 80) and 150 SM-6s in defense of Israel in June. We will further guesstimate that the five ships launched at least 100 SM-2 in total to defend against Iranian drones and missile targeting Israeli facilities very near the coast.
Adding in the missiles we know were used to defend Israel in 2024 gives us an estimate of 100 SM-2s, 142 SM-3s and 168 SM-6s used to defend Israel since October 7, 2023.
Combining the numbers with the above estimates for the Red Sea conflict through June 2025, we can estimate a grand total of 268 SM-2s, 159 SM-3s, and 280 SM-6s used in the Middle East from October of 2023 through the end of June 2025....
....MUCH MORE
Very related from May 28's "Anduril Secures $6 Billion in Global Defense Contracts":
Palmer, who drove CBS journalist Sharyn Alfonsi around Orange County in his 1985 Humvee, also expressed urgency for the U.S. to be ready with a full arsenal of smart weapons.
“The war games say we’re gonna run out of munitions in eight days in a fight with China. If we have to fight Iran and China and Russia all at the same time, we are screwed,” he said.
Luckey took Alfonsi on a boat ride 15 miles off the coast of Dana Point to showcase’s Anduril submarine drone called Dive XL, which is about the size of a school bus and can travel 1,000 miles fully submerged.Proving the Naysayers Wrong
Luckey, whose Business Journal-estimated worth as of last July was $5 billion, made his fortune by selling his virtual reality company Oculus VR to Facebook for $2.3 billion in 2014 when he was 21 (see his OC50 Rising Entrepreneur bio)....
....MUCH MORE, they go deep.
Our estimate of how dire the ammunition situation vis-à-vis China is a bit more optimistic. From April's "You Understand The United States Is Not Capable Of Defending Taiwan In The Event Of A Chinese Invasion, Right?":
A week's worth of high-intensity bombing by the Americans uses up half their munitions in the Pacific theater.
That "Taiwan" post may also be of interest.
