Trump Running Out of Missiles as Iran Continues to Survive - Admiral Mark Montgomery (Video)

In this 4 August 2026 published video, host Brandon J. Weichert talks with retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery who warns that the real casualty of the ongoing five-month war with Iran is America’s ability to fight a future war against China or Russia. While President Donald Trump has publicly rejected reports of a shortfall—stating the U.S. has “far more munitions than anyone in the world”—internal military data and independent analyses confirm that intense combat operations have severely drained advanced U.S. weapon stockpiles.

The intense burn rate during Operation Epic Fury and subsequent tit-for-tat exchanges have severely impacted critical U.S. munitions. Reports indicate the U.S. Army has burned through “virtually all” of its deployable surface-to-surface Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and newer Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) The U.S. has used roughly 45 percent to 50 percent of its baseline stockpiles for advanced precision strike weapons like Tomahawks and JASSMs. Roughly half of the available Patriot and THAAD interceptors have been fired to defend U.S. bases and regional allies like Jordan against routine Iranian ballistic missile salvos.

Admiral Montgomery notes that Congress and the Pentagon are placing large orders, but the U.S. defense industrial base cannot simply scale up overnight. Rebuilding these high-end stockpiles is throttled by a shortage of complex rocket motors, rare microelectronics, and a historically underinvested defense industrial base. Experts calculate it will take 3 to 4 years of uninterrupted manufacturing to return American missile inventories to pre-war levels. Other allies are already feeling the pinch of this ammunition gap; Montgomery points out that Ukraine has not received a single U.S. Patriot missile system deployment in over eight months as assets are diverted to the Middle East.

This “arithmetic” constraint has created an operational contradiction between the White House’s rhetoric and realities on the ground. Fears of fully emptying the arsenal have reportedly influenced Trump’s recent decisions to repeatedly set aside plans for massive, 400-to-500-strike daily air campaigns. Despite U.S. naval blockades and degraded surface fleets, Iran and its regional proxies have continued to logistically survive and launch drone and missile strikes into Kuwait, Bahrain, and shipping lanes during diplomatic pauses.

https://youtu.be/zm_UEeEEOfI