The gang that couldn’t shoot straight seems to have run out of ammunition

By James J. Devine

What would happen if we put a bunch of greedy, penny-pinching morons in charge of the world’s richest and most powerful country? They may devalue the dollar, alienate our allies, or perhaps start a war that causes the military to run out of ammunition…

We appear to be at a moment so peculiarly American that it might cause the ghosts of our founding fathers to stir uneasily in their graves. The most powerful military the world has ever known, the great sword and shield of democracy, finds itself in the peculiar position of running low on bullets.

Not because of some unforeseen catastrophe or cosmic accident, but because the men who sent it to war appear to have neglected to count what was in the pantry before lighting the stove.

At a retreat in the Catoctin Mountains, a place where presidents once went to find clarity and calm, the commander-in-chief was reportedly rather put out to discover that the nation’s arsenal resembles a frontier general’s supply tent after a long winter.

The defense secretary, a man whose qualifications for the position apparently include a certain enthusiasm for conflict rather than any particular expertise in logistics, found himself on the receiving end of some pointed questions.

How, the president demanded to know, could this have happened? How could the great American war machine be running on fumes?

The answer, as plain as the nose on a certain gentleman’s face, is that the administration embarked upon a military campaign the way a riverboat gambler might approach a game of faro—with great confidence and very little calculation.

The war with Iran, sold to the American people as a quick and decisive affair, has proven to be anything but. In the first month alone, the United States expended more than 850 Tomahawk missiles, over 1,000 Patriot interceptors, and 1,300 Army tactical missiles. These are not numbers that can be replenished with the wave of a pen or the signing of a contract. They require factories, supply chains, and most inconveniently of all, time.

The defense secretary, in his defense, has blamed this state of affairs on his predecessor’s administration, which is rather like a man who has set fire to his own barn and then expresses surprise that the previous owner had not kept the well more full.

The Biden administration may have left the cupboard somewhat bare, but it was this administration that decided to cook a seven-course meal without checking the larder.

The general who now serves as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a man of considerable military bearing and evident good sense, had warned that the stockpiles were insufficient for a prolonged conflict. But warnings, it seems, are like the weather in these parts—something to be acknowledged and then promptly ignored.

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture in the military, but they were asleep at the switch.

And now the bill has come due. The United States, in its wisdom, has found itself launching operations in seven different countries while watching its supply of long-range guided missiles dwindle to alarming levels.

The shortage has become so acute that the military is now forced to make tactical decisions about whether an incoming threat is worth shooting down. Imagine, if you will, a fire department that has to decide whether a burning house is worth putting out because they might need the water for a bigger fire later. This is the new reality, and it is as absurd as it is dangerous.

Ukraine, a nation fighting for its very existence against an aggressor with seemingly endless capacity for destruction, has been informed that there is little left to spare.

The Americans have run low, and there are no other suppliers waiting in the wings. The message, whether intended or not, is clear: fight on as best you can, but do not expect much help from the storehouse.

The president, ever the salesman, has taken to social media to assert that the nation has “massive amounts” of munitions and that those who report otherwise are engaged in treason. He has declared himself “extremely happy” with his defense secretary, a statement that lands with the same credibility as a riverboat captain insisting the vessel is not taking on water while the passengers are already reaching for the life preservers.

The Pentagon spokesman has denied that any such exchange took place at Camp David, a denial that lands with approximately the same force as a paper boat in a hurricane.

But denials do not produce missiles, and assertions do not fill empty warehouses. The defense department has requested 67 billion dollars in additional funding to rebuild the stockpiles, a figure that might cause the average citizen to choke on their morning coffee.

The overall defense budget request for the coming year is a staggering $1.5 trillion, a number so vast that it might as well be written in the sky by a passing comet. And yet, even this astronomical sum cannot produce instant results. The contracts must be signed, the factories must be tooled, the raw materials must be sourced, and the workers must be trained. The defense industrial base does not operate on campaign promises or Truth Social posts. It operates on steel, copper, and the tedious passage of days.

The president, one suspects, is not a man accustomed to the tedious passage of days. He is a man of action, of impulse, of the immediate solution. War, to such a man, is not a matter of logistics and supply lines but of will and strength.

So the nation finds itself in the peculiar position of having a leader who sees no contradiction between initiating a major conflict and failing to ensure the means to sustain it. It is as if a general had marched his army to the gates of the enemy only to discover he had forgotten to bring the ammunition, and then expressed profound annoyance at his quartermaster for not having it already waiting.

The tragedy, of course, extends beyond the empty magazines and the depleted missile batteries. Eighteen American service members have given their lives in this conflict, hundreds more have been wounded, and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, sending economic shockwaves through a world already weary of instability.

The neighboring Arab states watch with increasing alarm, wondering what manner of ally they have found themselves attached to. The Iranians, for all their troubles, remain defiant, and the stalemate continues.

One is reminded of the old saw about the difference between a good plan and a bad one: a good plan, they say, survives contact with the enemy. This administration’s plan, if it can be called such, has not survived contact with basic arithmetic.

The expense of war is not merely in blood and treasure, though those costs are incalculable. It is in the sobering realization that the nation’s capacity for destruction is not infinite, that even the most powerful military has its limits, and that those limits can be reached with surprising speed when one fails to pay attention to the details.

The defense secretary, we are told, will be staying. The president, we are assured, remains confident in his leadership. The shortages, we are promised, will be addressed. And all of this assurance is worth about as much as a paper promise from a man who has broken every promise he ever made.

The nation may indeed rebuild its stockpiles, may restock its arsenals, may find a way to continue its operations. But the fundamental question remains, and it is a question that no amount of funding or procurement can answer: how is it that a nation so rich, so powerful, so possessed of every advantage, could find itself in this position in the first place?

The answer, one suspects, lies not in the warehouses or the factories or the supply chains, but in the attitude of those who lead. For a nation that cannot be bothered to count its bullets before it goes to war is a nation that has forgotten the first lesson of conflict: that war is not about showing up, but about staying. And staying, as any old soldier will tell you, requires not just courage and will, but ammunition. Lots and lots of ammunition.

The spectacle of it all—the bluster, the denial, the finger-pointing, the empty warehouses—would be almost comical if it were not so deadly serious. It is as if the nation has elected a magician who promised to make its problems disappear, only to discover that the trick requires a supply of rabbits that has long since run out. The audience sits in the darkened theater, waiting for the illusion, while behind the curtain the performers frantically search for a rabbit that is no longer there.

And so the great American war machine sputters and strains, its engines overheated, its fuel tanks near empty, its crew arguing about who left the cap off the gas tank. The enemy, meanwhile, continues to fight, and the world watches with a mixture of concern and bewildered fascination. This is not how it was supposed to go. But then again, much of what has happened in this administration has not been how it was supposed to go.

The nation has been here before, of course, in times of crisis and conflict. But it has never quite been here in this way, with a president so convinced of his own wisdom that he cannot see the obvious, a defense secretary so eager for battle that he forgot to pack the ammunition, and a military so stretched that it must choose which threats to engage and which to let pass. It is a moment of profound absurdity, the kind that might inspire a great playwright or a satirist, if the subject were not so grave.

For now, the nation waits. It waits for the contracts to be signed, the factories to hum, the missiles to roll off the assembly lines. It waits for the shortage to end and the threat to subside. It waits, in other words, for something that will not come quickly, and that might not come at all. And in the waiting, it watches its leaders argue about who is to blame, while the real question—the question of how this happened and who will answer for it—goes largely unanswered.

The great American experiment, it seems, has entered a new phase, one in which the nation’s capacity for self-inflicted wounds rivals its capacity for defending itself against external threats. The warehouses are empty, the generals are worried, and the politicians are covering their tracks. And the American people, who sent these leaders to Washington to keep them safe, are left to wonder whether the nation can survive its own leadership. It is a question that no amount of missile production can answer, and that no amount of presidential assurance can dispel. The ammunition is gone, and with it, perhaps, some measure of the nation’s confidence in itself.