Trigger-happy Hegseth puts Pentagon on brink of new crisis with missile frenzy: insiders

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's "Operation Epic Fury" is draining America's precision missile arsenal at a rate that has triggered serious alarms inside the Pentagon, according to the Washington Post.

In just four weeks of war with Iran, the U.S. military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles — a staggering burn rate that has prompted urgent internal Pentagon discussions about ammunition replenishment and the crippling strategic consequences.

The Tomahawk has been the backbone of American military operations since its combat debut during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. These missiles are prized for their ability to travel more than 1,000 miles, eliminating the need to send pilots into heavily defended airspace. But there's a critical problem — only a few hundred are manufactured annually, meaning the global supply is severely limited and not easily replenished.

The frantic pace of consumption has forced the Navy to conduct emergency resupply operations at sea — a capability that has only recently been developed. Each destroyer carries dozens of these massive weapons, 20 feet long and weighing about 3,500 pounds each.

Pentagon officials are sounding the alarm in private. One official characterized the remaining Tomahawk supply in the Middle East as "alarmingly low." Another used military slang to describe the dire situation: the Pentagon is approaching "Winchester" — military terminology for running out of ammunition — for Tomahawk missiles in the Middle East.

The strategic implications are staggering. Heavy reliance on Tomahawks in the Iran conflict will force Pentagon planners into painful choices — whether to relocate missiles from other critical regions, including the Indo-Pacific, and whether to launch an expensive long-term manufacturing surge.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, laid out the grim mathematics. If the military has indeed fired more than 800 Tomahawks against Iran, "that would be about a quarter of the total inventory and would leave a large gap for a conflict in the Western Pacific." His think tank estimates the Navy possessed approximately 3,100 Tomahawks when the war began a month ago.

"It would take several years to replenish," Cancian warned.