US Is Burning Through Its Stockpile of Munitions

Trump administration officials have privately told lawmakers they're weighing use of the Cold War–era Defense Production Act to push weapons makers to crank out more munitions as the war with Iran burns through US stockpiles, three sources tell NBC News. The law would let the government force defense firms to prioritize specific weapons, largely to refill air-defense and interceptor inventories. Sources tell the Washington Post the stocks are being depleted at speed: Those sources say the US military could be just "days away" from needing to prioritize which targets it intercepts. What you need to know:

• Publicly, the White House and Pentagon insist the military has what it needs, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying stockpiles are sufficient to achieve Trump's current goals "and beyond." President Trump, however, has called on defense contractors to speed things up.
• Seth Jones, the president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, paints a different picture for NPR: "The reality is neither Israel nor the United States have sufficient munitions, either offensive or defensive, for a war that really lasts weeks into months."
• Business Insider focuses on Patriot missiles, reporting the US is "leaning hard" on them to neutralize Iranian missile and drone bombardments. It flags a late 2024 assessment from Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, who said conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine had "eaten into" Patriot stockpiles, "and to say otherwise would be dishonest."

• Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, echoes that in comments to NBC: "We now have a lot of partners using Patriot systems," among them Saudi Arabia and the UAE. "Those are all American systems, and so the backlog of countries that are going to need replenishment is going to be extraordinary, and they'll need it quickly."
• NBC points out that the Defense Production Act has been invoked in recent years: by Trump during the pandemic to accelerate the manufacturing of personal protective and medical equipment, and by President Biden to deal with a baby formula shortage. Trump actually invoked it last month to boost the supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides.