Over the Fourth of July weekend, as America celebrated its 249th birthday, President Donald Trump basked in the warm glow of fireworks, the successful passage of a very controversial—and expensive—Big, Beautiful Bill (BBB), and the series of ostensibly successful airstrikes he oversaw in Iran. 

To many in the public, America is back after years of uncertainty and decline. This feeling was capped off by Trump’s successful strikes on Iran that, according to Trump, “OBLITERATED” Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity and avoided the pitfalls of a major US military intervention in the Mideast.

Of course, the reality is far murkier. 

The consensus now is that Trump’s airstrikes successfully degraded Iran’s ability to acquire nuclear weapons, setting the program back for perhaps as long as two years. And with Israel still poking Iran and its proxies in the region, it remains to be seen if Trump can keep the United States out of war completely.

Most Americans believe their military is unquestioningly dominant. But the recent airstrikes, despite their outward success, actually underscore a weakness undergirding the American military.  

America Doesn’t Have Enough Weapons to Fight a Long War

For instance, the airstrikes against Iran’s hardened nuclear weapons facilities involved B-2 Spirit long-range stealth bombers using America’s largest non-nuclear bomb, the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The Americans possess only 19 B-2s in their entire arsenal—with no backup coming online in a reliable timeline or in any meaningful number, due to the complexity of the........

© The National Interest