Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday sought to tamp down growing alarm that the U.S. is overtaxing its arsenal of missiles and different munitions, as American forces pressed a sixth consecutive day of strikes against Iran with no outlined endpoint and no clear public accounting of what victory would require.
“We have got no scarcity of munitions,” Hegseth informed reporters Thursday. “Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons enable us to maintain this marketing campaign so long as we have to.”
Adm. Brad Cooper, the highest U.S. commander for forces within the Center East, informed reporters that Iranian missile assaults have decreased 90% because the first day of the conflict. He added that drone assaults have fallen 83%. An Iranian drone assault was answerable for the dying of six American troops in Kuwait on Sunday.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at a press convention on March 5, 2026.
Pool by way of ABC Information
“Iran is hoping that we can’t maintain this, which is a extremely unhealthy miscalculation,” Hegseth stated.
Every missile fired is dear and might take years to switch. The Pentagon has invested closely in creating extra munitions sooner lately. A 2025 reconciliation invoice from Congress surged $25 billion into munition procurement. In January, Lockheed Martin introduced it reached a cope with the Pentagon to speed up missile improvement.
Prior to now three days, Cooper stated, American plane had struck almost 200 targets deep inside Iran, together with websites round Tehran.
Adm. Brad Cooper speaks at a press convention on March 5, 2026.
Pool by way of ABC Information
On Thursday, he added, B-2 stealth bombers dropped dozens of two,000-pound penetrating munitions in opposition to deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, weapons particularly engineered to destroy the sort of hardened underground services Iran has spent years setting up to protect its most superior rocket methods.
The Pentagon has declined to reveal the price of the conflict in opposition to Iran, however impartial estimates counsel the worth is steep. The Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research has estimated that the marketing campaign is working roughly $891 million every of the opening days of the conflict, a tempo that will put the price of the primary 4 days alone at roughly $3.7 billion.
