Surge Capacity Issues for Selected United States Active Missiles

This article examines the critical imbalance between missile attrition rates and replenishment capacity within the United States and allied defense resupply system under conditions of sustained, high-intensity warfare against peer adversaries. The issue is whether the United States possesses sufficient surge capacity to produce specific missiles in the time of war or during a military conflict in which it or one or more allies is engaged, where the United States supplies these allies with active missiles. For example, in Ukraine, Russian forces launched over 5,000 long-range munitions in July 2025 alone, including 728 drones in a single day, while Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted hundreds every night. Despite Western resupply efforts, Ukrainian forces continued to face persistent shortages of interceptors, cruise missiles, and guided munitions, underscoring the fragility of surge logistics and the time lag between battlefield consumption and industrial replenishment. Based on this information, two inferences are apparent. First, the United States lacks sufficient surge capacity. Additionally, Russia has substantial surge capacity. Furthermore, during the recent war between Israel and Iran, Iran fired 550 ballistic missiles and 1,000 drones, with 31 impacts in populated areas, resulting in 28 Israeli fatalities and over 3,000 injuries. Israel’s retaliatory campaign destroyed over 1,000 Iranian missiles and 250 launchers, yet the operation consumed thousands of precision-guided munitions and required over 600 aerial refueling sorties. The conflict exposed the vulnerability of even advanced missile defense systems under saturation conditions and highlighted the strategic cost of maintaining deterrence at scale. This example demonstrates that Iran indeed also has substantial surge capacity. These two examples reveal that attrition rates in modern missile warfare can exceed replenishment timelines by orders of magnitude. Contributing factors include legacy production constraints, component obsolescence, workforce reactivation delays, and mineral dependencies concentrated in geopolitically sensitive regions. Without immediate and future investment in surge capacity, the United States risks entering future conflicts with insufficient missile inventories and degraded strategic credibility.