IRAN EXPOSES THE MOBILIZATION GAP / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Iran Exposes the Mobilization Gap

The U.S. can expend munitions much more quickly than it can replace them.

By: Andrew Davidson

The war with Iran has demonstrated both the strength of the U.S. military and the limits of the industrial system supporting it. 

Washington has overwhelming offensive capabilities and substantial air and missile defenses, but sustaining the strike campaign has put a heavy demand on its arsenal. 

Exact U.S. inventories are not publicly available, and public estimates cannot be taken as gospel. 

Still, reported expenditure rates, annual production levels and multiyear delivery schedules show the scale and direction of the problem: The U.S. can expend munitions much more quickly than it can replace them.

To be sure, the U.S. isn’t running out of bombs, nor has it lost the ability to continue its operations against Iran. 

But Washington cannot commit its entire arsenal to the current war. 

A portion must remain reserved for other (or overlapping) conflicts, particularly one involving China, where many of the same long-range strike munitions and missile defense interceptors used in Iran would be needed under more demanding conditions. 

As inventories approach those reserve requirements, the quantity available for current operations declines even as munitions remain in storage.

Past U.S. mobilization efforts relied on a large and diverse domestic industrial base and overlap between civilian and military production. 

Automotive plants, steel mills, chemical facilities, engine manufacturers and machine-tool companies already had the factories, workers and supplier relationships needed to pivot to military output. 

The conversion was neither immediate nor effortless – it required government coordination, new tooling, workforce expansion and the reallocation of materials – but mobilization began with much of the necessary industrial foundation already in place, including government-owned weapons plants, ammunition facilities and shipyards.

Government demand reinforced this system. 

During World War II, Washington guaranteed demand on a scale that justified factory expansion and long-term industrial investment. 

During the Cold War, procurement and large standing inventories gave firms reason to preserve production infrastructure that might otherwise have appeared commercially inefficient.

That model lost steam as military production became more specialized. 

After the Cold War, significant portions of U.S. manufacturing moved overseas, while domestic firms reduced excess capacity and adopted leaner production and inventory practices. 

Defense procurement also declined, production lines closed and suppliers consolidated as Washington reduced orders for weapons designed for large-scale war. 

This reduced the excess capacity available for rapid expansion.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military underwent a technological transformation. 

Precision became critical to high-end strike missions because guided weapons enabled aircraft to destroy targets with far fewer munitions and sorties than earlier bombing campaigns. 

Electronics, sensors and communications networks became embedded throughout the force. 

Individual systems gained greater accuracy, range and effectiveness but became more difficult to manufacture.

These trends reinforce each other. 

Compared with earlier mass-production systems, modern munitions depend more heavily on integrated seekers, processors, propulsion, software and explosives that must function together and meet demanding military standards. 

Civilian manufacturing can be redirected easily toward producing these systems.

In other words, the capabilities that make the U.S. military extraordinarily effective also limit the number of firms, facilities and workers able to reproduce its arsenal. 

Production systems are governed by bottlenecks rather than aggregate economic capacity. 

Major contractors may add shifts or expand final assembly, but output cannot exceed the supply of rocket motors, explosives, seekers, electronics and other specialized components. 

Testing and integration facilities impose additional limits because completed munitions must be validated before they can enter service. 

Production expands only as quickly as the slowest part of the system.

Some of these constraints are difficult to identify in advance. 

The Defense Department depends on more than 200,000 suppliers but lacks complete visibility into lower-tier sources of raw materials and components. 

A critical dependency may sit several layers beneath the prime contractor in a single producer of advanced semiconductors, rare earth magnets, specialty metals or energetic materials. 

These firms may lack the capital, workforce or equipment to expand alongside the majors, allowing one upstream constraint to limit an entire production line.

Capacity also depends on specialized labor, institutional time and demand certainty. 

Workforces of engineers, machinists, foundry workers, explosives specialists and integration personnel cannot be expanded quickly through emergency spending. 

New suppliers and redesigned components must be qualified, certified and tested, while facilities must satisfy technical and safety requirements. 

Companies are unlikely to invest in specialized plants, redundant suppliers and larger workforces for emergency orders that may disappear when a conflict ends. 

Durable expansion requires multiyear contracts and guaranteed purchasing levels.

Even then, higher output alone cannot replenish U.S. inventories. 

The same production lines must support current operations in Iran, supply forces elsewhere, assist Ukraine and other partners, fulfill foreign military sales and maintain reserves. 

Total production is not the only relevant measure; what matters is the portion that remains uncommitted after competing requirements are met.

Washington is adapting to these realities by expanding production lines, supporting additional suppliers and using multiyear contracts and guaranteed purchases to sustain demand. 

It is also rebuilding upstream capacity. 

USA Rare Earth’s Round Top project in Texas targets commercial heavy-rare-earth production in late 2028, while Texas Instruments’ Sherman campus could eventually include four semiconductor fabs. 

Both illustrate the years required to leverage investment into usable industrial capacity.

The same industrial constraints affect long-range precision strike and stand-off munitions. 

Shorter-range precision weapons such as standard JDAMs cannot fully substitute for stand-off munitions because they require aircraft to operate closer to defended targets, increasing the risk to crews and platforms. 

Expanding offensive depth will therefore require larger standing orders, additional suppliers and greater production of the high-end munitions themselves.

U.S. long-range strike capacity is under pressure as well. 

American forces reportedly fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles during the first month of the Iran war, compared with average annual procurement of just 86 missiles from fiscal 2015 through 2026.

Missile defense presents a different production challenge. 

The wars in Ukraine and Iran have shown that missile defense requires both quantity and high-end capability. 

Lower-cost interceptors can counter some threats, but the most difficult ballistic missile engagements still require integrated sensors and advanced interceptors. 

PAC-3 ACE illustrates the effort to increase magazine depth at lower cost while preserving PAC-3 MSE and other advanced interceptors for those demanding engagements. 

It will not resolve the immediate inventory problem, but it reflects recognition that using the most sophisticated interceptor against every threat is neither economically nor industrially sustainable.

PAC-3 MSE production shows both the potential and the delay involved. 

From 2019 through 2023, annual U.S. Army acquisition quantities ranged from 146 to 328 interceptors. 

Lockheed Martin’s total PAC-3 MSE output exceeded 500 in 2024, and by early 2026 the Pentagon described annual production as approximately 600. 

A seven-year framework aims eventually to raise capacity to approximately 2,000 interceptors per year.

The expansion shows that Washington began responding to the requirement exposed by Ukraine, but Iran is demonstrating the delay between recognizing a need and creating sufficient industrial capacity to meet it. 

New facilities must be built, suppliers qualified and workers trained before higher spending becomes higher output.

Production will expand through the late 2020s and into the early 2030s, but gains will be uneven. 

As major contractors expand final assembly capacity, bottlenecks will increasingly shift to lower-tier suppliers. 

Shortages of rocket motors, energetic materials, guidance systems, military electronics and critical materials will keep some munitions under pressure and prolong tradeoffs among current operations, allied deliveries and reserve requirements. 

Future U.S. mobilization will continue to draw on convertible civilian capacity for some equipment, but replenishing advanced munitions will depend increasingly on specialized industrial ecosystems built and sustained before war begins.