President Donald Trump campaigned on ending U.S. entanglements in foreign conflicts and said he would seek to end wars abroad.

Despite trying to resolve these conflicts, in Trump’s first six months, the United States has expended significant military resources in a seven-week conflict with the Houthis in Yemen, carried out unprecedented attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which prompted a perfunctory but expensive response, and defended Israel from Iranian attacks. Meanwhile, Ukraine desperately needs air defense systems to intercept incoming Russian missiles fired on a daily basis at its civilian population. This all comes as the Defense Department is trying to turn its attention to the threat posed by China.

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All these flashpoints inevitably strain resources and inventory. The Pentagon is conducting a review of its weapons stockpiles due to concerns that aiding Israel and Ukraine has come at the expense of U.S. military readiness. Initially, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the “decision was made” to suspend certain aid to Ukraine “to put America’s interests first following a DoD review.”

Defense officials maintain that the U.S. still has all the capability it needs to deter adversaries and defeat them if needed, but the review resulted in a temporary pause of promised munitions to Ukraine, although that move was swiftly reversed by Trump, whose patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have worn out.

The aid that was suspended coincided with the weapons “that were expended in recent conflicts in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday. “And again, not because there is a shortage but because it’s prudent to look at it and say, ‘OK, do we have enough of these in our stockpiles for all of our obligations around the world, both in defense of our bases in the Middle East but also our obligations to our Indo-Pacific partners and any other contingencies that might arise.'”

Rubio said the U.S. is “actively” talking with European allies with Patriot batteries about providing theirs to Ukraine and those countries who have ordered the weapons but have not received them.

“We have what we need. That being said, the question of how much do you need is an unanswerable question,” Army spokesman Steve Warren said Tuesday. “We always want more. More is better, but we are confident that we have what we need to meet the threats on the battlefield.”

‘Oops moment’

All of this is occurring as the Trump Pentagon has sought to convince Europe to take its security into its own hands, reducing dependence on the U.S., to free up the U.S. to focus on the threat posed by China in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

The two crews, consisting of 44 soldiers in total, who operated the two Patriot batteries on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar when Iran launched about a dozen ballistic missiles at it, were brought into the region from South Korea and Japan, further emphasizing that the need is greater than currently available.

The U.S. has rearranged the locations of its Patriot systems to defend Israel during Iran’s previous two attacks. In reference to the moving of defensive systems, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told lawmakers in April that transferring the battery required 73 C-17 cargo planes.

He said in November 2024 that it would be “dishonest” to say world events had not diminished U.S. stockpiles.

The Army, in its 2026 budget, intends to address the shortcomings. The Army is seeking to quadruple its goal for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile from 3,376 to 13,773, but that will only come to fruition if Congress grants the procurement request.

Each PAC-3 costs more than $3 million, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Patriot missile defense system costs more than $1 billion, according to the CSIS, which estimated that the system costs roughly $400 million and another roughly $690 million for the missiles.

“It kind of feels like this is a little bit of an ‘oops’ moment, where, like, ‘OK, now we actually do need to get serious about munition capacity,’” CSIS Missile Defense Project director Tom Karako said during a Tuesday event.

The U.S. has also provided 155-millimeter artillery shells to Ukraine and has sought, since the war began, to increase production. The Army is producing 40,000 monthly, though the service’s ultimate goal is to make 100,000 of them every month. It was only producing around 15,000 a month in early 2022.

The Army sought to reach that goal by the end of 2025, but Warren said it will likely not happen until the spring of 2026.

“Just one single artillery shell, pieces and parts of that artillery shell are manufactured in multiple locations across the country, and then they come together for final assembly,” Warren explained. “So any one of those points along the way can create a delay.”

Trump said Iran telegraphed its attack on Al Udeid because the regime had to save face in light of the U.S.’s military operation but did not want to incur additional U.S. attacks. The president’s thanking of Iranian leaders for tipping the U.S. off to the attack was a stark difference from the president’s threat of significant retaliation for any Iranian response.

Karako said the president’s comments left him “scratching my head,” thinking, “We can’t spare 30 PAC-3s for Ukraine, but we’re going to spare probably a similar number to make the Iranians feel better about themselves.”

Even though no one was hurt in the perfunctory Iranian attack, defending against it still required what Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said was “the largest single Patriot engagement in U.S. military history.”

The Navy has also been involved with aiding Israel’s defense. The acting chief of naval operations, Adm. James Kilby, told lawmakers last month that the Navy is using its SM-3 ballistic missile interceptors, which are the standard missiles the Navy uses to intercept short and medium range ballistic missiles, “at an alarming rate,” though he added, it is “using them quite effectively.”

Despite his concern, Kilby maintained that the Navy has all of the SM-3s it needs to face global threats.

Among the many lessons of these recent conflicts is that high-intensity conflicts with peer or near-peer adversaries will likely require a huge number of munitions and that, despite best efforts, ramping up production of the required weapons is not an easy feat.

UKRAINE’S NIGHTMARE COMES TRUE WITH PENTAGON MOVE TO HALT SOME AID THANKS TO STOCKPILES

For decades, the U.S. industrial base would be subjected to spikes in demand during conflict only for it to plummet “two to three years after the crisis,” and once “demand drop, the industrial base cuts core competencies and workforce, people are laid off and production lines are stopped,” William LaPlante, the former undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said in October 2023 when he was at the Pentagon.

At the time of LaPlante’s remarks, about a year and a half into Russia’s full-scale invasion, he said, “We are relearning just how resource-intensive this type of warfare can be, and how dialing down our production numbers, and the just-in-time delivery model doesn’t work in this kind of conflict,” and he added, “We need a paradigm shift to meet the needs of today and the future fight.”