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- [00:00]
A
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Bulwarks command post. I am Andrew Egger filling in for Ben Parker who is on vacation this week, joined as always by Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, the Bulwarks military analyst. Mark, how are you doing today?
- [00:13]
B
I'm doing great. I have to admit, Andrew, I'm having trouble seeing the screen. I just had my eyes dilated to get a new prescription. So you're all fuzzy and I'll just call you Ben for the rest of the show. Okay?
- [00:25]
A
Yes, yes. We're, we're holding the show together today with scotch tape and chewing gum. Her heartland can't see. I don't know anything about foreign affairs unlike Ben Parker. So we're gonna soldier ahead. I think it'll be a good show though. There's a lot to talk about. Wanted to start with a thing that has been swirling around the war in Iran for quite some time, which is the question of our various stockpiles of missiles. There has been a number of stories new reporting this week even though this is a thing we've been talking about for a while that there is a particular urgency now we have new reporting from Reuters on August 4. The US has used quote virtually all of its long range precision missiles during the Iran war, sources say. Reuters reports the army has used up much of its global stockpile of highly accurate long range missiles during its five month war with Iran according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military's readiness for future conflicts. The missiles are principally the army's surface to surface weapons known as army tactical missile systems and precision strike missiles. The US has used quote virtually all of these weapons according to two of the sources. We should note that the secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has disputed this. Specifically he was responding to correlating reporting from CNN basically saying the same thing. Hegseth sort of true to type says that banner's not true. Cnn, shame on you. We don't hate the fake news media enough. So that's the official official word here contra the US military sources for these news outlets. So General, let me just ask you because seems bad on the box. That does not seem like the kind of headline you want to be reading in the middle of a major military conflict or ever beyond that. That's, that's kind of where my expertise ends is like you'd want to have those missiles probably. But, but could you just kind of walk us through what we're actually talking about here, what the missiles in question are and just kind of give us a primer on what it seems that we're running short of these days.
- [02:27]
B
Yeah, Andrew, that's a great question. And I think most of Americans don't understand when they see a headline like that, they immediately begin to think, oh my gosh, we're completely out of ammunition. Well, the headline is a little bit misleading when it talks about precision strike missiles. That is a category. And I'll show you some pictures. Matt, why don't you bring up the Himars photo first. And that's a device right there. That's a piece of equipment called Himars. And when you look at the back of this, this is the vehicle and the equipment that Ukraine was fighting for back in 2023. They wanted a lot of these because it's different from an artillery piece which shoots around into the sky. It lands somewhere within a circular error of probability of, you know, 100 to 200 yards. These missiles. And there are, there are two six packs on the back of this vehicle. You can see those little round things on the left hand side of the screen. This will shoot Himars missiles. And they are about a million to a million and a half dollars per missile. But they are very precise. They travel much longer than an artillery shell. Artillery goes anywhere from 20 to 25 kilometers. These missiles can go up to 50 to 70 kilometers and strike a target within five meters of where they're aiming. So they're very accurate. That's why Ukraine wanted them. As the conflict went on in Ukraine. Matt, could you bring up the atacms? Ukraine wanted ATACMS missiles fired from the same vehicle, but there's only a couple of them in the back. As opposed to a six pack, there's only four. So these things go much further. They can go up to 300 kilometers, 170 or 180 miles. And Ukraine wanted them for deep strike capabilities. And we gave a lot of these to Ukraine for the primary reason that the US military was replacing the atacms. Because our analysis showed that even though it was deep strike out to 300km for some of our contingency plans like Taiwan or South Korea, we needed longer range. So a few years ago they started developing something called the precision strike missile, the Prism. Matt, go ahead and show that one. Here's the precision strike missile. Now that can go, and I can't give you the exact total depth of the battlefield, but let's just say it goes much further than 300km. So for some of our contingency operations ground to ground, this would be shooting from the ground to another target on the ground. These things can go a very long way, but they are also much more expensive. So a Thaad missile, I'm sorry, a Patriot is anywhere from four to five million dollars a copy. The Thads are anywhere from. I'm sorry, I'm getting into a different category of missile. My bad. The attack, the first one was about a million and a half dollars a copy. The, the Prism missiles, the second one I showed you is about $2 million a copy. So these things are expensive and they're very difficult to manufacture by the different defense industries that manufacture them. Now the other strike missiles we're talking about are the air defense interceptors. These are the missiles that intercept incoming cruise missiles, incoming enemy aircraft or, or in some cases even they're used against important and larger drone systems. Matt, can you show the picture of the Patriot system? Now that looks similar to the things we've already been describing. But these systems are their proximity fuses. They will strike a missile that's incoming or a cruise missile or an aircraft and they are very capable in terms of knocking down short range to a degree. Cruise missiles and aircraft, these cost about four to five million dollars a copy. Show the Thaad interceptors, Matt, if you will. This is a newer version of the Patriot which is much more expensive because it has more capability. This is the Thaad and those things cost 12 to 15 million dollars a missile. So I guess what I'm showing you Andrew, is all the different ground to ground and ground to air systems that are so important in a theater where cruise missiles have become prevalent and aircraft continue to be a problem. But we've got another issue and that is short range stuff like drones, smaller drones. And the last thing I'll show is the Stinger. Matt, if you can pull that out, that's a Stinger missile being used by a Mujahideen in Afghanistan a long time ago. But those are short range missiles. They travel out from anywhere from 4 to 6 km. They are not that expensive. You could use them against a drone even though the missile itself and the device will cost likely more than a couple of thousand dollars drone. So you see this is all contributing to layered defense. And when you're talking about a counter cruise missile and a counter aircraft environment like we see in Iran and what we're fighting with Iran launching missiles at ships and at U.S. facilities and gulf supporting nations like Oman or Jordan or uae, all of these missiles are getting a workout and that's why this campaign is so expensive. But the other thing, and I think we're going to talk about This a little bit as well. Ukraine desperately needs these missiles as well, all of them. And they've been asking for all of them for four years. We've been delivering, the US has been delivering all of these systems to Ukraine in a great number. But they're coming off the shelves of those. How do I want to say this? It's like food on the shelf of a grocery store. They're expiring. So we have been given expiring missiles to Ukraine and rebuilding new stocks for our own. But now when we've got competing conflicts between Ukraine and Iran, we're running out. And you know, Secretary Hegseth can post any post he wants saying that it's fake news, saying this. It's. I mean, he had one of his combatant commanders, the combatant commander from Pacific Command talk about how he was very concerned given the fact that he had dedicated a lot of his stocks which were allocated for his contingencies. What are those? Taiwan, South Korea, any other thing that happens in the India Pacific region. They've all been kind of shifted to Central Command and the fight against Iran. So you can see where an unconstrained resource environment where the President is saying conduct more strikes, hit more targets, defend ourselves, defend our allies. It rapidly is first of all costing a lot of money, but secondly, depleting the supplies of ammunition. And I'm sorry I got so geeky in that explanation, but that's the, the best long view I can give of all those missile systems.
- [10:16]
A
No, no, I really appreciate that. And folks, you know, he knows this stuff front to back because, because he did it without being able to see his screen with his dilated eyes. But I want to drill down a little bit on some of these more abstract questions of which I guess they're not really abstract questions, but some of these higher order questions of which stockpiles are depleted and which are not. But before we do that, just because you mentioned Ukraine, let's talk a little bit about the breaking news out of there, which is that just overnight we have had yet another attack of Russia really pummeling Kyiv. This is opposed to obviously from Volodymyr Zelensky. As of now, 44 people have been reported injured in the massive Russian strike on Kyiv. In the Kiev region, another 17 people tragically were killed. A heavy strike, 24 ballistic missiles, four Zircon missiles, another 115 drones. Jet powered. Main targets were warehouse facilities belonging to civilian businesses. Also strikes on infrastructure. And then to your point of what you were just talking about, he gets to the Ask here. Ballistic missile interceptors could have saved the lives of those killed today. It's very important that our partners understand that delays in supply, supplying them, or an unwillingness to provide anti ballistic systems lead directly to such horrific casualties and destruction. Partners who are not yet ready to play a more active role in supplying interceptors can help by implementing new sanctions. A significant share of Russia's ballistic missile production is still not under sanctions. So early in the Trump administration, this sort of thing would have seemed like purely a matter of will. Right? Purely a matter of, like, will the Trump administration continue to squeeze Zelensky or will it sort of open the pocketbook and move these things over? To what extent are we now constrained? I mean, there are certain classes that are now depleted, certain classes that are not. But at this point, when it comes to just our general conversation about more missile aid to Ukraine, are we reaching the point where the stores are just so bare that political will hardly matters so much in the short term?
- [12:15]
B
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And when you take on a war that you didn't have to execute, and when there was some, and I'm going to say this, some not well thought out intelligence and strategies linked to the intelligence, I mean, during the period 2024 to 2025, the intelligence community said that the capability of Iran in terms of shooting multiple cruise missiles or other kinds of missiles was, was certainly limited. Well, that hasn't proven to be the case. That was bad intelligence. We often underestimate our enemies in the intelligence community because frankly, you can't see a missile store from a satellite imagery. And there's no, there's very few human intelligence inside of the country of Iran. So we really didn't have a 100% clear view, intelligence wise, of what Iran had in terms of missiles. We've always known what Russia has had. But Matt, if you can put that tweet back up from President Zelensky, what I find important in this, Andrew, is some, some key things. All of these missiles, this was, this was a targeted operation by Russia on Kyiv itself, the capital. And they seem to be focusing not only on the capital city, but the province, the, the area of the Kiev region. We're seeing 24 ballistic missiles. That's a lot. But Russia has fired dozens more than that on any given night. The, the, the oric missiles and 115 drones. That's telling me something that's important. Russia is running low of weapons to use against Ukraine and they're focusing it on the capital of the country so they're trying to affect the will of the Ukrainian people, and they're trying to truthfully embarrass, to a degree, the Western unity from both NATO and the United States in terms of providing these missiles. So the interceptors, the Patriots, and that's others from European Union nations like the nasm, which is a whole different set of pieces of equipment. But what Zelensky is saying is, hey, it's really apparent that Russia is running low. They're on their last legs, but so are we. And they're continuing to attack our citizens, trying to influence our will, something that Russia has been trying to do over the past four years. And Zelensky's holding strong. He's doing good. But he has 17 of his citizens killed. He's got 44 wounded in one. In one couple of strikes. That's pretty important. And he's got to address that, hoping for more help until he can counter some of these things. Now, you know, when we talk about Ukraine, I've been watching them very closely because of my time with them when I was still in uniform, spent a lot of time in Ukraine working with their military. They have done a masterful job in. In terms of creating their drone systems and striking deep targets inside of Russia. I mean, the big thing that's been on the news over the last week or so is the large strike on the wild berries distribution facility, which is the Russian equivalent of Amazon. So they're striking to bring some targeted issues against the Russian people so they know they're not out of harm's way. They're striking inside of Moscow. They're striking targets. They assassinated last night. The guy who was kind of the father of the Russian drone program blowing up a Mercedes outside of Russia that he was in or attempted to assassinate. I don't know if he's dead or alive. But these are all things that Ukraine is trying to do in an asymmetric way. Not fighting the interceptor war because they can't, but taking the fight deep into Russian territory and causing President Putin more harm. Both of them are on their back feet, to be honest with you. They're on their back legs fighting this fight, and it's really troubling to see where this goes.
- [16:31]
A
Yeah. Let me ask you one more question about the Reuters report of these stockpile shortages, which is, at least according to their reporting. The two classes of missile that you were talking about before that are really quite depleted now are those ATACMs and the PRisms. Obviously, there is a certain amount of overlap between the possible strategic use of all of these systems, running dry of one doesn't necessarily take a specific play out of your playbook. But when you're talking about running short on those two systems in particular, and of course, potentially there are others that are also in bad shape, although not depleted to the same extent, what does that mean on the ground, say, in the war in Iran? I mean, like, are there tactical objectives that our military might want to pursue over there that would be made more difficult by these particular shortages, or is it. Are we still at a point where, at least in that theater, this is mostly still stuff that we can. We can, you know, compensate for with other classes of weapon?
- [17:30]
B
Yeah, it's very difficult to do that. The only other classes of weapons that can deliver these kind of strikes in a long distance are aircraft. You know, when you're talking about strike aircraft that go against the target, and as soon as you start doing that, you're. You're basically replacing an unmanned system that can go a long distance to hit a target with a manned system. And that takes a whole lot of intelligence to make sure you prepare the way. And there's no air defense interceptors to knock those planes down and kill the pilots. It takes refueling capabilities. Because an aircraft going over ground, it doesn't just go from one place to another and explode. It has to loiter, find the target, and then come back to their base, which subjects the pilot and the crew to more dangers. I mean, it's easier to strike these with a missile that's unmanned. Here's the thing, though, Andrew, and this is. I think this is the important thing to point out. You know, there may be a lot of Americans saying, what the hell's going on? How come you guys haven't prepared for this? Well, the atacms, the Prisms, the Patriots, and the thads are all systems that were designed many, many years ago and started to be produced for specific types of combat. Yeah. Did the American military understand that there was a potential for the use of drone in combat operations? Yes, they did. But truthfully, Andrew, we're playing catch up right now. The ubiquitous drones on the battlefield right now are something we would have never expected to the extent that they're being used four or five years ago. So when you're talking about these precision missiles that take a very long time to build, they are expensive, so they're competing with other systems in the Department of Defense. Do we build a thousand more Patriot missiles or do we build maybe a battleship? I don't know. I'm throwing that out there. But those are the kinds of kind of day to day decisions that go on in the Department of Defense in the acquisition community. So it's a lot harder than it looks. And I think sometimes the American public believes when we fight wars, it's a lot like a video game where you just, you know, like the old dream, dream of Genie, I'm dating myself. Where you cross your arms and blink and everything comes out okay. It doesn't work that way. That's why the importance of setting a strategy, of understanding the implications of what you want to do before you go into a war and to connect your end state with your ways of conducting operations and the means you have available to do it. The so called ends, ways and means approach to strategy is so very important. And that's why when you go into a war and you're not sure what you're going to get out of it, it's real easy to enter, it's real hard to get out. And that's what we're seeing in terms of not only US and Iran, but what Russia is doing in Ukraine. They thought it was going to be a three week operation. It's now five years later and they're still fighting there.
- [20:42]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you one more sort of meta question about all of this and then we'll throw to a quick ad the Secretary of Defense's post there. Obviously he's denying the reporting about these stockpiles.
- [20:54]
B
But.
- [20:55]
A
But the shot at the media is interesting that you don't hate the media enough thing that's kind of a crude version of an argument that you do see a certain amount made that this type of reporting on net hurts the United States. Right. Even if you are a military correspondent who is able to find out about the current state of our various missile stockpiles, maybe you ought to keep that to yourself because that's not something you want Iran to be able to open the New York Times or log on to Reuters or CNN and be able to see as a journalist that of kind.