MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's get another view of this issue with Stacie Pettyjohn. She's a senior fellow and director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. That's an independent nonprofit that develops national security and defense policies. Good morning. Thanks for joining us.
STACIE PETTYJOHN: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: So are you surprised by what we're learning about these missile stockpiles? The reporting is that the levels are so low. I mean, for example, Patriot missiles down by two-thirds since the start of the Iran war.
PETTYJOHN: No, not at all. We've never purchased enough of the precision-guided weapons that analysts believe would be needed for large wars. In the budgeting process that the Pentagon has, they tend to end up getting short shrift compared to the large weapons platforms like ships, tanks, airplanes. And habitually, we underbuy, and there's a lot of volatility in the buys. And that has led to really lean stockpiles that we found out, if you are engaged in a high-intensity conflict and a long-lasting one, you can run out. This has happened in the past with other weapons like JDAMs, which were precision-guided bombs in the war against ISIS.
MARTIN: Why does it take so long to replenish these? Is it the budgeting process that you just spoke about, or is there something in just the production itself that takes as much time?
PETTYJOHN: It's both. The budgeting process takes a couple of years of itself. But then there are fairly lean production lines for most of these weapons because of the change year-to-year. Industry isn't going to invest and have surplus capacity lying around that - if the buys change dramatically. And this has led to really thin supply chains at, like, second- and third-tier suppliers, and that makes it hard to ramp up quickly because you need to increase production across the board. And it's particularly difficult with some of the smaller suppliers that provide key components of the weapons.
MARTIN: You just heard our colleague Kat Lonsdorf mention that low stockpiles could leave the U.S. vulnerable, for example, in the event of China attacking Taiwan. Could you just, as briefly as you can, explain that?
PETTYJOHN: China has the largest inventory of missiles in the world - ballistic and cruise missiles - and a key part of their doctrine is to use them to attack U.S. bases and forces in the region. So the lack of air defense interceptors, like the Patriot and THAAD, would be a huge problem. We know there aren't sufficient numbers of them anyway, but there definitely aren't right now as we look at the balance between the two sides.
MARTIN: Should the Trump administration rethink its strategy in Iran, given what this reporting is telling us about these missile levels?
PETTYJOHN: Absolutely. Yes, the U.S. isn't going to win a war of endurance where there's an asymmetry of the stakes, like there is right now between the U.S. and Iran. Iran has much more interest in sort of holding firm and securing the gains that it's made in this war, namely control over the Strait of Hormuz, and it's willing to tolerate a tremendous amount of pain to achieve that.
The U.S. has found that it can't compel it to give up by bombing it, and there are no good options to escalate. So when you add that, the cost of the weapons, the production timelines, which also favor Iran, it seems like it is time to rethink and focus on rebuilding U.S. military capability so that we don't have long-term vulnerabilities that could lead to aggression in other parts of the world.
MARTIN: So, you know, we've spent a lot of time on this program and many other news programs, obviously talking about sort of the diplomatic strategy here, the diplomatic initiatives and whether that could be different. But we're talking here about just sort of defense strategy. Is there a way to defend against Iranian drones and missiles without using Patriot missiles?
PETTYJOHN: There are. So - for some types of weapons. The ballistic missiles are the hardest to defend against. And we've seen this with Ukraine, where they have been asking for more Patriots and need them because Russia is increasingly relying on ballistic missiles, which are really fast, and you do need these higher-end type of systems like Patriot that - or the Aegis system to defend against them.
But it's the cheap drones, where there are a lot of different options for shooting those down or disabling them. And that's where the U.S. military and, frankly, a lot of its allies and partners in the Middle East have underinvested. And if they have other options to shoot down drones that are more cost-effective, that can help them to conserve the high-end weapons for the most difficult and high-end threats.
MARTIN: Really fast here. We know that Russia supplies ballistics and drones to Iran. Any signs that Russia's stockpiles are running low?
PETTYJOHN: No. Russia's got a surplus right now, and that's part of the problem. As you think about this going forward, there's evidence that Russia is already resupplying Iran and sending back improved versions of the drones that Iran sent to them in 2022. And there's going to, I think, be a lot more of that, and Iran's going to be able to rebuild its offensive weapons before the U.S. can rebuild its defensive ones.
MARTIN: We have to leave it there. Sobering. That's Stacie Pettyjohn. She's a senior fellow and director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. Stacie Pettyjohn, thanks.
PETTYJOHN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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