The U.S. campaign against Iran is quietly eating into the precision munition stockpiles that would be needed to defend Taiwan, and a major war game has already demonstrated exactly how thin those reserves are, analysts warn.
As reported by "Hvylya", researchers at the Payne Institute drew a direct line between munition expenditures in the Iran conflict and the Pacific theater scenario that dominates Pentagon planning. A 2023 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded, based on a series of war game simulations, that the U.S. military would run out of key munitions "within a week of trying to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion."
The first 36 hours against Iran have already consumed over 3,000 precision-guided munitions and interceptors. The researchers argued this was "a polite way of saying the American military should be hoping the next salvo with Iran is smaller - and that China won't do the math to figure out what is left of American precision-guided munitions to defend Taiwan."
The problem compounds in multiple directions. Replacing expended weapons requires critical minerals that China dominates - 98 percent of gallium, roughly 80 percent of tungsten, and significant shares of rare earth elements. In a Taiwan contingency, Beijing would not merely be the adversary on the battlefield but also the gatekeeper of the supply chain needed to reload.
The researchers framed the Iran campaign as a "stress test of Western industrial endurance" with implications far beyond the Middle East. In "a world of simultaneous pressures," they wrote, "a prolonged campaign in the Gulf does not merely shape events there; it eats into military options elsewhere." A force that has "burned deep into its interceptor stockpile must accept more risk in another theater or ration its defenses." The question is no longer hypothetical - the drawdown is already underway.
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