Top military officials told lawmakers in a closed door briefing on Tuesday that they may not be able to shoot down every Iranian drone being launched against US military installations and assets in retaliatory attacks, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The officials, led by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran has been deploying thousands of one-way attack drones and while they have capacity to take down the vast majority but not all of the barrage.
As a result, the officials said in a classified briefing for lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the US was focused on destroying the launch sites for the drones and conventional missiles as quickly as possible. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
In retaliation against US strikes, Iran has been launching its low-cost, one-way attack Shahed drones. By flying low and slow, the drones are seen to be better able to evade conventional air defenses than ballistic missiles.
A senior administration official said Iran’s apparent drone strategy – to get the US to sacrifice its most sophisticated Patriot and Thaad interceptors – was misguided and unsuccessful because the US has been downing the drones with several different measures.
Still, top Democrats in Congress have expressed concerns the US has been burning through interceptors to defend against ballistic missiles launched by Iran. Caine acknowledged that concern, a person familiar with the matter said, even as he expressed confidence in stockpile levels in public.
“We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense,” Caine said at a news conference at the Pentagon on Wednesday morning, although he offered no details or specifics.
The high rate of fire has been expensive. In the first days of the war, the US spent about $2bn per day, although that figure has dropped to closer to $1bn and is expected to fall further as the conflict continues, according to a person familiar with a preliminary defense department analysis.
A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the joint chiefs of staff declined to comment due to operations security.
On Monday night, Trump wrote on social media that the US could sustain its rate of fire indefinitely, saying the stockpile of “medium and upper medium grade” munitions was “virtually unlimited”. Still, he conceded that weapons at the “highest end” were “not where we want them to be”.
At a press briefing on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US had more than enough weapons to wage an extended war with Iran and claimed Trump’s post had been criticizing the Biden administration’s decision to send weapons to Ukraine.
“We have weapon stockpiles in places that many in this world don’t even know about,” Leavitt said. “The president was pointing out that, unfortunately, we had a very stupid and incompetent leader in this White House for four years who gave away many of our best weapons for nothing.”
