Comments
By panny 2026-03-0123:55 archive link https://archive.is/usjGR
Interesting aspect: if the ammo is all used up in Iran, it can't be sold or given to Ukraine.
Tinfoil hat time?
By mrtksn 2026-03-026:39 That happened when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel started a full blown war in Gaza. The whole situation was very convenient for Russia, weapon deliveries were slashed to supply Israel.
By onlyrealcuzzo 2026-03-020:294 reply You know who exports a lot of oil and gas NOT through the straight of hormuz?
By eqvinox 2026-03-020:43 Doesn't even matter if it's a direct effect, the increase in oil prices is/will be enough.
By ajam1507 2026-03-0215:10 America?
By ddoottddoott 2026-03-020:421 reply Nigeria.
By pseudohadamard 2026-03-039:22 Italy and Spain?
Which sort of oil are we talking about again?
By ParentiSoundSys 2026-03-022:211 reply It's just funny that people can't stomach that their own ruling class is leading them down the primrose path so they have to go casting about for a foreign bogeyman who's making it happen, despite the fact that every major Western power has bent the knee to this action against Iran.
By ParentiSoundSys 2026-03-0215:15 If you're in Europe or one of the 20 Eyes countries it's the same thing.
By feb012025 2026-03-028:10 The attack is for Israel... enough already
By ethbr1 2026-03-044:25 If the ammo is all used up in Iran, new ammo must be procured.
This lets the current administration direct funding away from established military primes to their preferred vendors (i.e. political patronage).
This is reminding us something that we should never have forgotten - modern war has an insatiable demand for munitions.
To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year. There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.
The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025. Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.
Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany. World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans. The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.
Modern mechanized combat demands an insane manufacturing and logistics chain. It can burn through stockpiles incredibly fast, especially of high capability expensive munitions. War production levels are utterly unsustainable during peace time.
This is why peer and near-peer conflict is as much an economic and productive game as it is a military one. Shock and awe takes a tremendous amount of resources to accomplish at all, let alone sustain.
By Ajakks 2026-03-026:05 Very well said.
Your whole comment I kept recalling "The Art of War" - which is of course, mostly about how not to go to war, how if you must go to war, it needs to be efficient, bc the war will decimate the State faster than the enemy ever could, but be really smart about it, bc not only is it incredibly expensive, you could also lose, and its very hard to recover from.
Best to avoid warring if you at all can - thousands of years later, still true.
By mrtksn 2026-03-026:47 That's why decapitation attacks can be very efficient, as wars are actually just extra-election elite changes since regular people minding their own business don't actually intend to kill some other group of people even if they are outrage and propaganda filled.
The problem is, those decapitation attacks work when the institutions are weak or structured in a way that all the power is in the hands of one person. It's always funny to watch in Hollywood movies everybody scrambled to save the US president and the US president being extremeyly important. Even in real life Americans swear in a replacement ASAP when the president dies (i.e. Kennedy). That's very funny from European perspective, RIP to the guy but just elect someone else why you are making it a big deal?
Also, the wars in Europe all have stories about how soldiers pausing the fight one the frontlines and having a chat sharing meals exchanging cigarettes with the opponent etc.
By ParentiSoundSys 2026-03-022:22 If you don't have an industrial base, you don't have a military. Good thing we hollowed ours out to juice the S&P to 7000!
By rasz 2026-03-024:05 >US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year.
Just a reminder that THAAD interceptor price is not due to material cost or difficulty to manufacture. Its approximately as expensive as gold per kilogram precisely because its made in such small numbers as part of a gold plated military contract.
By bediger4000 2026-03-023:44 Wait I was just told that the US was going to foster human warfighters, not wimpy logistics desk jockeys.
Warfighting and good grooming were said to be key.
By kaycey2022 2026-03-023:391 reply You’re saying the enemy doesn’t care about the Dow?
By sigwinch 2026-03-0213:42 It’s been over 100 years since the exchange was closed for war. They might open it for manual trading if algorithmic (80% of volume) is attacked. I bet we would never get attribution and that the US admin benefits by saying any damage must be Iran.
By aftbit 2026-03-054:40 Trying a little experiment. Here's the same comment as above, but I asked Claude to research my claims and add web citations. Any errors in content are my own - I originally wrote the comment with no AI assistance and only brief web searching to check my numbers.
---
This is reminding us something that we should never have forgotten - modern war has an insatiable demand for munitions.
To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025.[1][2] We produce just under 100 per year.[3] There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.[4]
The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025.[5] Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.
Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany.[6][7] World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans.[8] The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.[9][10]
Modern mechanized combat demands an insane manufacturing and logistics chain. It can burn through stockpiles incredibly fast, especially of high capability expensive munitions. War production levels are utterly unsustainable during peace time.
This is why peer and near-peer conflict is as much an economic and productive game as it is a military one. Shock and awe takes a tremendous amount of resources to accomplish at all, let alone sustain.
*Sources:*
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/middleeast/us-thaad-missile-i...
[2] https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/us-army-rais...
[3] https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/lockheed-pentagon-ink-pl...
[4] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5713637-lockheed-martin-q...
[5] https://dronexl.co/2025/10/22/ukraine-deploys-9000-drones-da...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Crisis_of_1915
[7] https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/shells-cri...
[8] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13518046.2024.2...
[9] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA416944.pdf
[10] https://wp.oldmagazinearticles.com/magazine-articles/the-col...
