A Body Blow? The War on Iran and U.S. Military Readiness

What is military readiness, actually? And how has it been degraded, in the U.S. military's case, due to the war against Iran? And what does that mean for U.S. and allied interests in the rest of the world? And these are the questions that we start to grapple with in this episode with Mark Hansen of CSIS, Stacey Pettyjohn of the Center for New American Security, and Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute. Enjoy the show. How do we think about how ready the U.S. military is? We talk about readiness a lot, and we mean lots of different things by that. Brad Carson wrote an article first years ago called, "The Chicken is Ready to Eat," with a pun on ready means lots of things. Going around the table, how should we think about what readiness actually means? Well, you have to start with the question, ready for what? If you're thinking about a conflict with China, you want to bring in a variety of considerations about munitions, for example, and posture. Something that Cuba, very different set of considerations, most people think about it in terms of the ability for a unit to execute the missions that it's designed for. And the U.S. puts a lot of money into readiness, so on the whole, our forces are at a much higher level of readiness. They're at a much higher level of readiness than most nations keep their forces at. I think Mark's exactly right, that it is ready for what. Dick Beck's had that great book years ago, decades ago now, on readiness. And you need to think about whether you're considering the material, the people, and then sort of stockpiles of different things that they need along the way. And the big debate up until this point had been whether you're ready to deploy. That was feeding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Having the new BCTs to go in and having sufficient readiness so that you could undertake operations that were needed right now versus being ready to hopefully deter, but ready in case you needed to defend against a great power adversary and sort of conserving that readiness and focusing your training on high-end operations and making sure that you can conduct across that full spectrum. The more narrow set that US military forces are often asked to undertake in lesser contingencies. If I could broaden the aperture a little bit here and talk in terms of conceptual readiness or cognitive readiness in terms of our policymakers having the skills with regard to deterrence, with regard to interwar deterrence, with regard to escalation management that are required in order to conduct a limited war, this is something which we've actually learned quite a bit about just in the last couple of years with regard to Iran. And it seems to have gone all out the window in this current war. That things that the Israelis learned in 2024, we learned in 2025 with the Israelis were forgotten very quickly. And it has to do with, in part, it has to do with the personality of decision makers, tendency to engage in mixed messaging, although that's not just a foible of this current administration. This is a problem that senior decision makers have had repeatedly, and also a tendency to focus on capabilities. It's at the expense of credibility and understanding how sometimes messaging that is intended for our domestic audience has an impact on foreign actors in ways that undercuts our ability to deter or compel. Admiral Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, was on TV yesterday and he said he's not at all worried about any munition shortages or availability and that they're prepared for any contingency. Mark, you folks especially have done a lot of pathbreaking work on how we've chewed through key munitions throughout the course of this war. Ever since it started earlier this year, it's hard to believe how long it's been going on actually. Do you think Admiral Cooper is, I'm not going to ask you if he's lying, do you think Admiral Cooper is being accurate here? If you just look at CENTCOM, I think that's fair. That is, if the war with Iran were to continue, we have enough munitions to conduct that. We looked at seven munitions that are used heavily against Iran and would be used in the Western Pacific. Overall, we've used about half. So that means we have half left. On the other hand, if you open the aperture and you look. If the world isn't just CENTCOM, yeah. You look at PACOM, I think it's quite different and we have particularly a problem with defenses against ballistic missiles. The Patriots, the THAADs, those are down by 60% and there are no substitutes. So when you run out, you're out as the Ukrainians are finding out. I was going to say, I think the key thing is it's not just the US military's readiness and need for the munitions, it's allies and partners too. All states have been firing off so many of their interceptors. So the line and the queue that's going to form to get the ones that are coming out of off the manufacturing lines next is going to be huge. But I'm going to say something else controversial. I don't think the defensive interceptors are as important for the Pacific because at least for the Patriots and the THAADs, because in every war game I've been in, the first thing that the red team hits is the radars. So the stockpiles don't really matter. I think the ship based ones are more. More survivable and more important. And those have also been significantly depleted. So your SM-3, SM-2, SM-6. We saw a preview of that in Iran very early in the war hit, I think a billion dollar radar system just in the opening days. And imagine a more capable adversary. Yeah, I think they hit one in Qatar and then they hit the THAAD radar in Jordan at MSEB. Yeah. Without knowing what Admiral Cooper was thinking, I'll just say that the president has said his intention is to low key this. For the foreseeable future. Now, of course, the enemy has a vote. So it's possible that if the Iranians were to escalate, our requirements would go way up. But also keep in mind that they have an issue with the same problem we have. They're probably running low on their missile, maybe not drones, but on their missile stockpile. And they're probably going to be husbanding their resources. And also they are limited in terms of what they can do, because if they were to ramp up escalation against, say, critical infrastructure in the Gulf, this is an area where they're very vulnerable in. This statement may have been based on a calculation that the Iranians are going to try to operate in this band, lower middle range of kind of intensity of their operations. And they're constrained in doing so by their own vulnerabilities. I don't know. But certainly if I was in one of the other combatant commands, I'd be concerned about their equities. I've heard some people make the argument that, listen, we shouldn't be too bothered by burning through all these munitions and the interceptors, especially because if war were to kick off with China. We didn't have enough in the first place. So we just shouldn't be bothered by it. What do you make of that? It is true. Most people would look at this wargaming. Stacey done a lot of that also. I think it all comes to the same conclusion. That is that we didn't have enough munitions even before this war began. Having said that, there is a difference between being able to conduct a conflict for three weeks as opposed to six weeks. And those extra three weeks might buy you enough. You might have enough for two weeks. You might have enough for three weeks. make in your garage. Mark, what do you make of all this? MARK MIRCHANDANI: I think we're moving. to a range of capabilities, not just the high end, which we've heard a lot about, but high, medium, low end. On Patriot, they are going to develop a medium capability Patriot, less expensive, less capable, but might be able to handle a variety of threats. When you look at ground attack, of course, you've got the high end with Tomahawk and JASM, but there are a lot of medium range, short range. You hear a lot out of Silicon Valley, a lot of ideas in that space. So I think you'll see a spectrum, not just the high end. I agree. And I think we absolutely need a high, low mix, but it's harder on the defensive side because the interceptors, you have to have a sophisticated seeker to hit something incoming and maybe autonomous weapons that use cameras, whether they're of some sort, whether it's a drone or not. We'll be able to intercept certain types of threats. But even on the offensive side, I think, well, I'm very much in favor of having lower cost munitions to supplement our stockpiles. There are real limitations to what they can do and what they can be used for. And they're great for regional states, whether it's Iran or Russia, that's trying to project power relatively close to their borders. It's a different problem for the United States. And in particular, if you look at the Pacific, Phil Shears and I have a report that should come out this week that looks at the United States and the United States. And it's a different problem for the United States. It looks at two missions in a war with China and what cheap drones could bring to it, in particular, anti-ship and then attacking coastal air bases. And we find that they could be helpful. But if you assume interception rates along the lines of what the Ukrainians are experiencing with drones that they're sending into Russia, 98% of them are being shot down. You still need a lot of them. And by themselves, the cost of an effective salvo is sometimes more than the cost of expensive missile. The real value might be the cost of an effective missile. It might be that they can be produced and you have more of them. They can be produced more rapidly. You said earlier, Stacey, that the interceptors are something we should be less concerned about for a war in the Pacific. What are the munitions that you think will be more critical? And because the radars will get hit, you mentioned, what are some of the munitions that you think are perhaps a more critical class for such contingencies, especially involving Taiwan? For the U.S. versus Taiwan, what I'd really like to see on the ground side is mobile missile defenses. And we don't have that. And maybe we'll have IFPICs for that. For at least air defense, if the Army gets version increment two, that I think is basically the AMRAAM missile in a box, which would be great. I do think that the ship-based air defenses are very important because they can help extend the regional air umbrella and they can move around and bolster the defenses that might be there on the ground. But their mobility and the additional defenses that they have on makes them more survivable than just at an air base where it's sitting there. So on the offensive side, it is things like LRASM, JASM, moving to SAW, whatever sort of longer range air-to-air missile, the new one that the Air Force is just beginning to produce, I think, AM260, all of that type of stuff. But those are LRASM, I think we're talking in the order of like 500 that the whole joint forces bought at this point. 500, that'd be gone in a day. Bad news doesn't get better with time. So it's just, it's good that we found out now that some of the flaws in our past approach have become clear and we're acting on them. I'll just say, and again, I will defer to others for more about this, but for low-end systems, I think this is an area where the civilian sector can make a contribution with off-the-shelf kind of systems. Maybe it's at the lower end of the lower end spectrum, but I think that's an area where we could probably wrap up quickly. We saw that in Ukraine, it's happened. Cheap cruise missiles would be a great thing. A cheaper cruise missile, something that is not Tomahawk priced, that can get you like a thousand miles would be a wonderful addition to have, I think, to the arsenal. And the Air Force is pursuing with FAM and the ETV program. And I think there's one other that I'm forgetting right now and like absolutely want to do that on the offensive side, especially for fixed targets where it's a little bit easier. The requirements aren't such that you're going to have to put in a really expensive components. Beyond that, I think you're starting to see the wear on the force. And obviously the Navy has been the most prominent example with the carrier that's been out 200 some days. I forget exactly how many, but if we're really going to maintain this sort of blockade against Iran, that's going to require a huge amount of the surface fleet there patrolling all the time. And that wear and tear is even as difficult if not harder than the munitions, the long range missiles. You read my mind. That's exactly where I wanted to go next. And that was the perfect transition. Mark, you're a Marine, you speak Navy. Stacey just said, we've had these ships out there a long time. We've moved ships that should be, frankly, in the Pacific into the Gulf. I think we have 17 destroyers alone to help reinforce this blockade against Iran. What is keeping ships deployed due to the readiness of, of course, obvious things, the availability, but the long-term readiness of the force, keeping these ships out there for so long? There are two issues. I mean, one is there is a part of the force that's designed to be deployed. The strategic trade-off is that they're now all in the Middle East. They aren't in the Western Pacific. They aren't in the Caribbean. So you've taken the strategic risk of putting them all in one region. And then there's the risk of ships that either tended to be deployed, so then now they're doing maybe back-to-back deployments, and then you're extending deployments. And that wears on the cruise. We saw that with the Abraham Lincoln. On the other hand, we've done this before. In Vietnam, you know, we kept the Naval forces, you know, off the coast for a decade. We did. We had more of them, yes. We did have more of them. If you have Navy plans for the rotation, I mean, I think that's, that's doable. But there's the strategic trade-off that you're giving up on other regions. Where do you think Iran's capabilities go? They've entered this adaptation and innovation cycle in wartime and this intensity that we've seen with Russia. And there's a lot of cooperation going on between Russia, China, Iran. There was just this great Wall Street Journal piece about how Russian engineers are working inside Chinese industry and China to enable this. Iran seems to be heading in that direction. Right now, we're in this sort of low-grade period of the conflict right now where it's. There's strikes often. I think there were just a couple last night or the night before. But it's not like a high-intensity war right now. Iran does have the options to sort of escalate and may have increasingly sophisticated tools in order to do so. What do you all make of that? Starting with you, Mike. I have fruit trees in my front yard and every year we prune them in order to get some of the secondary branches, you know, remove them so that the energy goes to the primary branches and, you know, produces more, better fruit. And in a way, that's what we did with the Iranian military inadvertently. We kind of got rid of much of their air force and got rid of much of their navy, which were probably, in a lot of ways, kind of less productive, less survivable components of their other armed forces and left them with what the best protected components and most survivable, which were their missiles and drones, and which were the most effective as well. So I think they're going to double down on that. But the problem with that approach is that, as Eric Olson once wrote in an article a few years ago, where he said, you know, this creates path dependencies and potentially a single point of failure if our air and missile defenses get better. So it kind of simplifies the task for us that we just have to focus mainly on this threat. They probably will get better. They'll get, maybe their missiles will get countermeasures or penetration aids from the Russians or the Chinese, and they'll be more challenging to deal with. The drones will maybe get faster. They'll have some of the jet-powered kind of Shahed 131s and 136s. Hopefully the Gulf countries and maybe the United States will also benefit from Ukrainian experience in dealing with the drones. So I'm not quite sure. I'm not sure how it all kind of works itself out. But for the near term, I think they're going to have to double down on what worked and what they have left in a way simplifies the task for us. I think they're already rebuilding, and there's evidence that they're getting Chinese assistance like precursor materials for their ballistic missiles and for the fuel for their ballistic missiles, and that the Russians, they have seen a Garand 2 has been found fired in the Middle East. And that's just going to continue. But it's not really just about just the qualitative improvements that worry me, because part of the challenge of this is that you have to face a diverse array of threats. So you're right, it's simpler in that they don't have an Air Force or a Navy, but they're fielding really different weapons that require different types of defenses at every location, essentially. And they're focusing on saturation attacks, and that ultimately, the cost exchange ratio is in their favor. So if they start improving. The Shah had 136 to bring it up to one of the Garand 2 variants, and that is less jammable and just more sophisticated if they can start passing targeting information back, like our friend Mike Coffin has talked about the Russians are doing to follow on missiles. And then they have just enough ballistic and cruise missiles to seed them into these larger drone salvos that are really, really hard to defend. The Iranians have been very badly hurt. We don't really know how badly in the sense that they've been able to control the release of information. They've been struck with 23,000 attacks, and the damage that we can see is very great. So I'm not convinced that they have a lot of reserve capability. Now, I think Stacey's quite correct that they are rebuilding, they're getting help to rebuild, but I don't think they have something that they've been holding back and then they're now gonna release. I think that they've done everything that they could and called in all of their allies. On that, let me just say there was a Wall Street Journal report a few days ago that they're rebuilding thus far mainly involves components and the assembly of missiles using components that had been stockpiled before the war, which sounds right to me because I think a great focus or great attention was put on destroying their missile R&D and production infrastructure. Also to the degree that in the future, they're going to want to move that underground. They could potentially move it to some of the missile cities right now, but then you'd have to use, there's less space for missiles in there. Or if they want to dig new facilities, that'll take a while. So they will go in, and let me just say with regard to drones, that will be something they could do probably in a matter of months. Missiles might take years, but your point is well taken. I agree with you, but it'll take them more time and they're going to want to do it in a way so they're not as vulnerable next time. My impression, and I'm not sure I'm wrong, so you two might know better than I do. I don't think they've used many of their anti-ship cruise missiles, have they? That's the one weapon that I feel like I haven't heard as much about. And it might just be a reporting bias that there's information that I want to share. I think we're mainly on that. out of the range of most of their systems. So I think you're right. Most of what they've used have been drones against the kind of the maritime shipping in the Gulf. I think that when they've been taking shots at our naval vessels, I think those have probably been anti-ship missiles. Or ballistic. They do have ballistic missiles that have been developed for that purpose. I think they may have been outside the range of some of the anti-ship cruise missiles they have, but this has not been an information-rich war in terms of briefings and reporting on what's going on and who's using it. But wait, when they have used missiles against our ships, they've tended to use ballistic missiles, and they haven't really. I mean, I think there's a South Korean tanker that got hit with anti-ship cruise missiles early in the war, but it is an interesting omission. I don't know if it's a range issue. I don't know what their range is, to be honest. Probably hit a lot of the launchers. Yeah. And the problem is, I think a lot of those missiles, the Iranians in the past years have published videos which shows that a lot of those missiles are kept in underground tunnels, kind of missile cities. Just like their ballistic missiles and their drones. So they may have been outside of our reach, but we probably, again, rubbled the entrances and stuff. But we may have gotten at some of them. Apparently, you've got a lot of the mines. They said they're claiming, I think, 90, 95% of the 8,000 mines that they claim they had. So it's possible they were in less resilient kind of facilities. I don't know. I don't know. I think that highlights a major question, which is we really don't have a good sense about what their remaining military capability is. We know it's enough to scare the shipping companies and the insurance companies and to take shots at both our Gulf allies and our ships. But whether they can just harass or whether they have really a major capability still left, we just don't know. I agree. But we're seeing even their minimal harassment capability, they hit an A-10. There were several, I forget the exact number, F-15Es that got hit at MSAB again. And that's sort of on the far range of their weaponry. So it's surprising to me that they're still able to put that much pressure. And I think there is a real tension with the U.S.'s position right now, since they rely so heavily on ground-based aircraft that even based about as far away as they can be and still be in the Middle East, they're vulnerable. So does that mean they have to push them even farther back to Romania, Bulgaria, and try to operate from these ridiculous ranges over to continue to have any effect? Or are they just going to leave the region? Or we're going to have to start digging on the ground, too. Or we just accept the fact that we're going to lose in the airplane every once in a while. Well, bringing this back to China, some have argued that this war that the U.S. launched against Iran has actually been bad for China. It hurts China in some way, whether it's energy exposure, highlighting their maritime vulnerabilities, degrading a Chinese partner. I don't personally agree with that. I don't personally agree with these arguments in the sense that maybe it hurts China, but I think it's hurt us a lot more. But I'd like to get your opinions. I think it's hurt the U.S. much more than China. And right now, China is sort of content to sit back while they don't like the disruption and the spike in price to energy, see what the United States military is doing, how it's performing, and watch it expend scarce resources that aren't going to be able to be quickly repaired. Also, how it's operating, they're watching, they're drawing forces from the Pacific Ocean. And I think that's going to be a big issue. I think it's going to be a big issue for the Pacific, not just on the Navy side. I know the Air Force has parts of units, if not whole squadrons, deployed to the Middle East. And General Schneider, Pacific Air Force's commander, recently said that they couldn't conduct exercises on the scale that they had been doing this past year in the upcoming one. I'll just say that one thing, though, that came out of this war, which I suspect the Chinese knew, but when you see it, it has a greater impact. They get, I guess, was it a third of their oil from the Gulf? I guess they're, I think about half or two thirds of their oil comes from abroad and about half of that's from the Gulf. And they see that's vulnerable. The U.S. was able to impose a blockade. And because of our positional advantage halfway around the world, we have the ability to put a squeeze on them. Now, they had, I guess, six months or so of oil stockpiled. So that's, they've been preparing for that. But this is something which I think has to be kind of a something which a wake up call for them. Yeah. A downside for both Russia and China, not just in Iran, but also Venezuela and Cuba, is that their demonstrated inability to protect their client states. And although the United States has, you know, had enormous problems in the Middle East, we're still able to pummel their ally, their client, and they really couldn't stop us. I'm not sure they see, though, that the Iranians, I think, would defer to, you know, colleagues who focus on China more than I do. That's a client. Yeah. They, you know, they're a useful, partner or maybe co-belligerent even. It's just simply, maybe that's a little too strong, but we're not fighting them now. But they just are a useful source of leverage for the U.S. But they, I don't think there was any kind of implied commitment to Iran. And, you know, I think the Iranians were disappointed by the Chinese conduct. But I think it's, they don't expect much from Russia. And I think they've learned that they can't expect much from China either. I think, yeah. And also, it makes me think, Mark, of if that argument's true, then someone in Moscow could be sitting, well, even though Ukraine's gone badly, for us, at least it showed that the U.S. can't protect one of its clients. Like, it's sort of like, OK, maybe, but let's look at the strategic picture and the situation we've caught ourselves in. Well, I mean, to flip that around, we were able to protect our clients. Not from invasion. Not from invasion. But Ukraine's, they're much higher military pressure in some ways than Iran is right now. The reason that they have held out is because the United States and NATO, you know, have provided immense amounts of munitions and weapons. I mean, something that Russia and China have not done. You know, they provided some capabilities, but nothing on the scale of what we've done for Ukraine. And if you are a country that's trying to make a decision between the U.S. and China, China is not going to protect them. So you're saying downstream diplomatic and balance of power benefits downstream? Yes. Questions come up about whether the war has damage deterrence against China, particularly over Taiwan. And the expenditure of munitions has certainly hurt that, because going into the war, most people thought we didn't have enough. Now we have even less. But there are two things that push in the other direction. One is the obvious skill of the U.S. military. We've had a hard time connecting that skill with a successful political outcome. But our ability to beat down the Iranian air defenses and essentially bomb anything we wanted in the country, you know, we were able to do with very, very low casualties. If you look at Venezuela, we will snatch their head of state and took him back to New York, putting him on trial. And the Chinese are very aware that they have no recent combat experience. Their last war was against Vietnam in 1979. They did very badly. From their literature, you know, they are very conscious of that. So hard to say how they're weighing it, but they must be looking at that. The other thing is, Iran has been able to exert control over the strait. Ukraine has been able to exert control over the Black Sea, both of them without the traditional attributes of a navy. And the Chinese might be looking at the Taiwan strait and wondering if Taiwan might be able to do something like that also. Presidents have repeatedly, I think, had problems in the post-Cold War era, thinking in a kind of rigorous way about deterrence. There was a Defense Science Board study, I think in 2007, about deterrence skills and how, with the end of the Cold War, the retirement of a lot of officials who had experienced, and this was about nuclear deterrence, but I think it also applies to conventional deterrence, that a lot of our skills in this area have atrophied. And when you look back, you know, we had with President Obama, the Syrian chemical weapons red line in 2012 and 2013, which when he failed to stand by them, we had the next year, Russians going into Crimea, and then you had the Chinese starting to build these airstrips and these islands, and the South China Sea. And then you had a president. Well, that was already happening. It had started before, but I think it ramped up after that. I think it's fair to say. And then with President Biden, you know, he kind of used the most economical way of kind of threatening the Iranians saying, don't. And then he kept emphasizing their interest in de-escalation. And I'll just say in the Middle East, talking about de-escalation is like wearing a kick-me sign on your back. And then finally, President Trump had consistently spewed fire, but then stepped back. In the end, I think, emboldened Iran. So I think, and this is a problem, you know, presidents don't go to war college. And I don't know how you deal with this problem, but this is a repeat problem we've had. I'll just say one quick thing, and then I want to give Stacey the last word, because we're just about out of time. I'd largely reject that interpretation of credibility and deterrence. I don't think countries say, well, the U.S. did this here in this corner of the world, and therefore they will do X, Y in this other corner of the world. I don't think that's how most U.S. adversaries think, which isn't to say they don't take lessons from those things, but I don't think it's why they do things. I think, you know, even the most famous argument is that Putin thought that the U.S. would just roll over on Ukraine because of the Afghan withdrawal. I've seen it reported. I'm not convinced. I think countries make decisions based on their interpretation of the balance of power, especially in the region that they're going to go to war in, their understanding of relative value of the object and capabilities. But, you know, it's different schools of thought. But it's a data point. It's a data point. I tend to agree with you, Ryan. And I think that if you look at the balance of power and what has happened to U.S. military strength in the Indo-Pacific as a result of the war in Iran, it has shifted in an unfavorable direction towards China. They've seen, you know, the expenditure of so many munitions. They've seen a lot of deployments of forces. I think from a operational perspective, I would expect that they're feeling somewhat validated with their counter-intervention strategy, which really focuses on holding bases and surface forces at risk. No U.S. ship has been hit by a missile, thankfully. But Iran is much less capable than China. And China has thousands of long-range missiles and much more sophisticated sensors and a network connecting them all together. So from that perspective, I think it would, you know, hurt deterrence. The one thing that might give them pause, because they're always weighing the risks, too, is seeing, I think, that Iran has been pummeled to the ground and they haven't conceded, and that should raise questions about going after Taiwan and a society, how much they're willing to withstand in order to maintain their independence. Thank you for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. 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