'Battlefield math' working against Pentagon due to Iran advantage: retired general

Reacting to a report from Wall Street Journal that there are growing fears of weaponry shortages looming for the Pentagon after Donald Trump ordered an assault on Iran, a retired general claimed the war planners may have made a major miscalculation.

Appearing on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,“ retired United States Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling explained that when he worked in the Pentagon, one of his duties included war-planning and he understands the constraints that come with limited stocks of weaponry.

With regard to Iran, he suggested the invaded country in some ways may have the upper hand since the US has military needs all over the world.

“The last thing I'd talk about is the president, when he was talking to the New York Times last night, talked about the amount of munitions that are being used; 2000 strikes as of this morning,” he told co-host Joe Scarborough. “About that number, precision weaponry used in all of them, defensive systems like the Patriot missiles and the THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] batteries that are protecting various Gulf states and soldiers in the regions have very expensive missiles that they shoot.”

“Those can only last so long, he cautioned. “And as we've said, the intel estimates say that Iran has anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 missiles that they can launch. You can only shoot them down with so many defensive weapons.”

“So the dynamics of expenditure gets into something called battlefield math,” he elaborated. “And somebody at the Pentagon is now concluding, where are we taking risk around other places in the world? I know they're doing that in the Pentagon, because that used to be my job when we were in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000’s.”

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