The conflict in Iran is made-up of two components: the Navy and the missile arsenal. But after the US burned through more missiles in the first four days of Operation Epic Fury than in the four-year Ukrainian conflict, some are already asking if the US has enough munitions to sustain the Iranian campaign.

Tehran relies heavily on its navy and missiles and has ignored much of the rest. Iran's Air Force is old and out of date. It is unable to penetrate Israel’s air defences, nor would it stand a chance against the US navy's aviation.

As bne IntelliNews has reported, Iran’s Navy is formidable, albeit asymmetric. Iran possesses, thanks to his partners, an array of anti-ship missiles that threatened the US Navy which has underinvested in defences although it still has a huge advantage in offensive weapons.

But it is Iran’s missile arsenal that poses the biggest threats to Israel, its regional neighbours, and the US attacking force.

Munitions demand soaring

Iran’s missile arsenal is very large and increasingly effective. Although the US and Israel began its bombardments at the weekend, Tehran has immediately retaliated and targeted US military assets throughout the region hitting every single one of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, as well as raining down deadly missile barrages on Israel which have penetrated the Iron Dome and done extensive damage.

After less than a week, analysts are already asking if the US has enough missiles to maintain its own barrage and in particular if it has enough defensive missiles to protect against the sustained Iranian retaliation.

Tensions are already rising following reports that Trump dragged defence contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon CEOs into the White House at the weekend demanding the boost production to meet the soaring demand. The Pentagon has already admitted that the first four-day-long bombardment of Iran consumed more long-range munitions than four years of fighting in Ukraine.

The GCC states have built one of the world’s most concentrated air and missile defence networks, anchored by extensive deployments of US-made Patriot and THAAD systems, but these defences were not designed to deal with a large-scale and sustained Iranian missile barrage. They are at best enough to cope with a short regional conflict that is quickly resolved. Qatar’s stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles will last four days at the current rate of use, according to an internal analysis seen by Bloomberg News. 

Saudi Arabia is the largest regional operator, with an estimated 20 to 25 Patriot batteries, followed by the United Arab Emirates with roughly eight to 10 and Qatar with about 10 fire units ordered and largely delivered. Kuwait operates approximately five to six batteries, while Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, has acquired a small number in recent years. Oman has no reported Patriot systems at all but was also hit by Iranian missiles at the weekend. In total, the GCC is estimated to operate between 45 and 55 Patriot batteries between the six member states.

Deployment of the more advanced THAAD system is far more limited. The UAE became the first foreign operator and fields two operational THAAD batteries, while Saudi Arabia signed a deal for seven batteries, with deliveries yet to arrive. Qatar has also approved the purchase of THAAD, but these have not arrived yet. Taken together, the GCC is estimated to field roughly nine to 11 THAAD batteries in all.

Trump shrugged off questions regarding the sufficiency of supplies in US military stockpiles, boasting of the “unlimited supply” of US munitions. And it still has 60 Patriot systems in its stockpile and seven operational THAAD systems that includes around 800 interceptor missiles, according to Pentagon budget documents and Congressional Research Service reports.

Thanks to the Ukrainian war, the US has run down its military stockpile under the Biden administration and left itself unprepared for another large war. Last summer’s 12-day war between Iran and Israel only made those problems worse. The US burned through 150 THAAD interceptors in that conflict and had to resupply Israel with Patriots use in defence of last year’s Iranian missile barrage that took years to replace.

Just how close the US is to scrapping the bottom of the barrel was highlighted when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth temporarily halted all military supplies to Ukraine last July saying that stockpiles had fallen below the amount of supplies demanded by the US strategic planners.

Now the pressure is ramping up production. Missile maker Raytheon CEO promised Trump to boost production “eventually” to reach 1,000 Tomahawks a year from the current 100-200 it reportedly makes now, but the Pentagon has only budgeted and ordered for 57 for all of 2026.

The story with Patriots missiles is similar. In high demand from not only Ukraine, but now GCC states that are burning through their stocks to ward off Iranian strikes, Raytheon can only make 12-16 Patriot systems a year, which include about 500 PAC-3 interceptor missiles a year, costing around $5mn a pop. Iran has fired somewhere between 150 and 300 missiles in just the last four days.

The order book for Patriots is large with a backlog of more than 2,000 PAC-3 missiles from Nato allies and beyond, or at least a four-years waiting time.

As bne IntelliNews reported, as the US and its European allies have been so reluctant sign the defence sector procurement contracts since the Ukraine war broke out four years ago, the defence sector’s industrial base has been hollowed out and now demand is spiking from several conflicts and Europe’s ReArm programme, the West is unable to ramp up production quickly just when it's needed.

That is not true of the China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (CRINK) alliance, which has been investing heavily in defence for several years. Indeed, Russia’s military production went into surplus last year to the point where Russia has been able to restart arms exports worth $15bn in 2025.

JCPOA missile exemption

Over the last decade Iran has invested heavily into developing missiles and drones, thanks to an exemption on missile development handed to it by the Obama administration during the JCPOA nuclear deal.

The Obama administration’s decision to exclude missiles from the 2015 agreement was a calculated concession in order to get the historic agreement over the line before Barack Obama left office. Both China and Russia categorically refused to include missile restrictions in the multilateral negotiations, and Tehran declared its indigenous missile development a non-negotiable sovereign right.

In the language of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, the provisions on missiles merely “called upon” Iran not to conduct certain activities, far weaker than the binding prohibition in the prior Resolution 1929, which had explicitly prohibited Iran from pursuing ballistic missile technology capable of delivering nuclear warheads.The Obama administration watered down the enforcement language of that earlier resolution to get the deal through before the deadline.

Free from constraint, Iran used the decade that followed to transform its missile program from a crude deterrent into a sophisticated, mass-produced strategic arsenal. It perfected guidance systems, extended ranges to cover all of the Middle East and parts of Europe, transitioned from liquid to solid-fuel propulsion, and constructed hardened underground launch facilities designed to withstand aerial bombardment.

Operation Epic Fury seeks to undo this mistake. In comments at the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: "The objectives of this operation are to destroy their ballistic missile capability and make sure they can't rebuild, and make sure that they can't hide behind that to have a nuclear program," he said.

China supplies missiles parts

Over the past two years, China has emerged as the principal external supplier of Iran’s ballistic missile program, providing everything from chemical precursors for solid rocket fuel to satellite guidance through its BeiDou-3 navigation network, which replaced American GPS across Iran’s entire military architecture. The US Treasury Department sanctioned several Chinese entities for supplying the IRGC with chemicals used in missile fuel production.

Russia has also been supplying Iran with arms and dual-use technology, although the Ukraine war has limited its supplies until recently mainly to small arms and handheld anti-aircraft systems for infantry.

China’s help has specifically targeted missile production. Western intelligence revealed Iranian cargo ships unloading shipments of sodium perchlorate at Bandar Abbas before the war, a substance that bypasses existing monitoring mechanisms, in quantities sufficient to produce propellant for approximately 800 new missiles in a single delivery.

Beijing had also been negotiating the sale of CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles to Tehran, a system designed to sink aircraft carriers. In December 2025, American special forces raided a merchant vessel in the Indian Ocean carrying Chinese military cargo bound for the Revolutionary Guards. And as bne IntelliNews reported, China now appears to be sharing high quality real-time satellite intelligence with Tehran, in what analysts say could be a gamechanger.

By the time Operation Epic Fury launched, Iran possessed the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, an estimated 2,000 missiles of varying ranges dispersed across hardened underground facilities, rebuilt and resupplied in large part by Chinese industrial networks, according to reports.

And in the run up to the war, Tehran has been accelerating its missile development. Israeli defence planners tracked Chinese components, machine tools, and technical guidance to Iranian factories and estimated Iran would be able to produce 5,000 missiles a year by 2027 and potentially 10,000 by the end of the decade.

Analysts argue that China's support of Iranian missile production was strategic. Every interceptor that the US has to fire in the Middle East to protect its allies means one less interceptor available for the western Pacific theatre. Already in this conflict talk has started of transferring the air defence systems deployed in the Indo-Pacific theatre to the Middle East. Ukraine is also a big loser in this as it is desperate for more patriot interceptors and ammunition. By accelerating Iran's missile output China was hoping to stretch American munitions supplies without having to deploy a single soldier of its own.

The Chinese spy network is also hard at work. The Iranian salvo forces the US to reveal electronic warfare capabilities, radar signatures, and interceptor performance data in combat conditions that is worth gold to Chinese military planners, say military analysts.

US stocks had also been drained by the Ukraine conflict, and now it's opened a second France in the Middle East that only improves China's position should it choose to take back Taiwan as it's doubtful the US could fight wars on three fronts at once also analysts have been speculating that the White House will now be encouraged to bring the Ukraine conflicts to as speedy and ends as is humanly possible.