Trump: We have 'unlimited' weapons to fight 'forever' war

In a startling Truth Social post overnight on Monday, President Donald Trump defied reality and claimed that U.S. weapons were "unlimited" and the U.S. could fight "forever" with "these supplies."

Of course by all measure, every measure, this is not true. It would never be true, but in the case of today, after four years of emptying our stores for Ukraine, and then more than two years for Israel, fighting the Houthis, defending Israel twice, Operation Midnight Hammer in June, and now Operation Epic Fury — well you remember the nursery rhyme: Old Mother Hubbard, the cupboard is bare, and soon we won't be able to give the dog a bone.

Perhaps what is the most absurd about Trump's words, other than the lack of truth (he did not "rebuild" the stockpiles in one year following President Biden's departure; the missiles were still being sent to Ukraine under previous agreements and then he told the Europeans they could buy them, depleting the stores even further). But then his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan "razin'" Caine also warned, too, that an operation, especially an extended one, could be risky. From the Washington Post last week:

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed his concerns at a White House meeting last week with Trump and his top aides, these people said, cautioning that any major operation against Iran will face challenges because the U.S. munitions stockpile has been significantly depleted by Washington’s ongoing defense of Israel and support for Ukraine. Caine’s remarks at the White House meeting have not been previously reported.

Trump immediately went to Truth Social to contradict the story, saying the opposite was true. But this concern does not come from nowhere. As we reported here the military was already "razin" the alarms last summer about the "shocking" number of missiles that had been depleted from the stockpiles. According to a deep dive by defense writer Mike Fredenberg, along with all the other diminished capacity, the standard missile (SM-3) variant was down 33% and those cost $12.5 to $28 million a piece.

And with each interception attempt requiring at least two missiles, and often more than that, thwarting a few missiles can easily end up costing more than it does to buy an F-35, making missile defense against a peer adversary seem unaffordable. Now that is truly alarming.

This was of course just SM-3s. According to reports, the U.S. used a quarter of its THAAD missile interceptors during the 12-day war in June alone. The Guardian reported in July that the U.S. only had 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it would need for the Pentagon’s future military plans — with many already sent to Ukraine (and more promised).

Indeed, we knew back in 2024 during the fighting with the Houthis that the U.S. was expending overpriced, ridiculously expensive missiles to counter cheap Houthi weaponry. According to reports we were expending Tomahawk cruise missiles, air to air, and air to surface missiles at an amazing clip. That is likely one of the reasons Trump ended that conflict so abruptly.

Don't think that experts haven't already warned that Operation Epic Fury could be limited by these realities. On March 1, one day after Trump announced his war, the Wall Street Journal quoted several who said just that.

“The Trump administration has fired TLAMS (Tomahawks) at an extraordinary rate in operations around the globe, in the Middle East against Iran and the Houthis as well as in Nigeria on Christmas Day,” said Becca Wasser, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “When we wargame, TLAMS are some of the first munitions to go within that first week of a U.S.-China conflict."

While tons of money has gone into the industry to start rebuilding the stockpiles we know that will take years to happen, especially for the more "high end" stuff, as Trump refers to it.

"We have a peacetime defense industrial base, and we've had that for decades…we're not really set up to quickly produce things,” Fredenburg told RS back in October. “We don’t know how much more capacity they can squeeze out of existing facilities.”

Having Israel as a "partner" in the war is no help either. The WSJ quotes officials who say they are low on supply too, particularly Arrow 3 air-defense interceptors, and air-launched ballistic missiles — "a weapon it used to take out Iranian missile launchers this summer and to attack Hamas leaders in Qatar last year."

Suggesting the U.S. has enough weapons for a "forever" war is wrong and Trump must know he is gaslighting everyone who ever voted for him because he said he would never get America into another forever war. But what he is doing is ultimately destructive to our military and national defense too. He is signaling that he would be willing to bleed the stockpiles dry to prove a point. He might just end up doing it.