The most consequential fact to emerge from open-source reporting on the Iran war is not any single strike or ceasefire collapse, but a quieter one: the United States has burned through irreplaceable munitions at a pace that has alarmed its own defense planners. Roughly half the global Tomahawk inventory, virtually the entire ATACMS and PrSM stockpile, and more than a thousand JASSM-ERs in the first month alone — weapons that take three to four years to rebuild — have gone into Iran. The US has not lacked other ways to strike Iranian targets; it has chosen, consistently, to fire expensive standoff weapons from beyond Iran’s air-defense envelope rather than fly aircraft closer and use cheaper direct-attack munitions. That choice is the main reason the stockpile has collapsed so fast, and it is not accidental — it is the output of a risk calculation Iran has forced onto American commanders.

Iran’s “mosaic” air-defense doctrine — dozens of dispersed, semi-autonomous, mobile IRGC-controlled units rather than one hardened, targetable belt — has made full suppression impractical within the war’s timeline. The consequences of testing that defense at closer range have already shown up in the casualty list: the April 3 downing of a US F-15E over southwestern Iran, and reported instances of Iranian systems achieving a radar lock on an F-35A, undercutting the assumption that stealth alone........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)