Hegseth’s latest attack on Kelly underlines alarm over US weapons stockpiles 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest attack against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is underscoring the alarm over the state of the U.S. military’s weapons stockpiles more than two months into the war with Iran. 

Hegseth accused Kelly, a Navy veteran and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), of divulging classified information regarding key U.S. munitions during his appearance on a Sunday news show, putting a spotlight not only on his ongoing feud with the Arizona Republican but also on the high-usage rate of premier munitions against Tehran and the time it will take to replenish them. 

“Let’s put aside that the general thrust of munition depletion is not classified, and Kelly did not go near the details. For Hegseth to bicker over classification rather than address the core argument Kelly makes suggests Hegseth simply can’t argue on the facts,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who is now a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It’s the national security equivalent of going ad hominem on a debate opponent when you’re poorly matched on knowledge, ability and content.” 

The new chapter of the feud kicked off when Kelly said he and his Senate colleagues received a “detailed” briefing on the stockpiles of long-range Tomahawk missiles; Terminal High Altitude Area Defenses (THAADs), which are used to shield against short, medium and intermediate-range missiles; Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs); and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3s.), ship-based surface-to-air missiles. 

“I think it’s fair to say it’s shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines, because this president got our country into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline, and because of that, we’ve expended a lot of munitions,” Kelly said on CBS. 

“As for how long it will take to replenish those reserves,” the Arizona senator said. “We’re talking about years.”

In response, Hegseth said Kelly, a former Navy........

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