US burning through interceptors to shoot down Iranian drones, officials say

Top military officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing on Tuesday that the United States was rapidly depleting its supply of defensive missile interceptors to shoot down Iranian attack drones, even as the Trump administration has publicly dismissed those concerns.

The officials, including the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran had been deploying its drones in a way designed to force the US to use its sophisticated Patriot and Thaad interceptors while holding its own high-tech supersonic and ballistic missiles in reserve.

As a result, officials said, the US is racing to destroy as many of Iran’s drone and missile launch sites as quickly as possible – before it has to begin prioritizing which incoming targets to intercept, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the joint chiefs of staff declined to comment due to operations security.

In retaliation against US strikes, Iran has been launching thousands of one-way Shahed drones at American military installations and assets in the region. By flying slow and low to the ground, the drones are better able to evade conventional air defenses than ballistic missiles.

Caine has not repeated concerns about interceptor stockpiles publicly, a worry he also expressed before the strikes, while Trump administration officials, including defense secretary Pete Hegseth and the undersecretary of defense for policy, Bridge Colby, have denied them even in private.

But congressional officials now estimate that at the current rate the US is expending its sophisticated interceptors to shoot them down, the Pentagon may have only “one or two weeks” of full interceptor capability remaining, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The high rate of fire has also been expensive. In the first days of the war, the US spent about $2bn per day, although that figure has dropped to closer to $1bn and is expected to fall further as the conflict continues, according to a person familiar with a preliminary defense department analysis.

On Monday night, Trump wrote on social media that the US could sustain its rate of fire indefinitely, saying the stockpile of “medium and upper medium grade” munitions was “virtually unlimited”. Still, he conceded that weapons at the “highest end” were “not where we want them to be”.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US had more than enough weapons to wage an extended war with Iran and claimed Trump’s post had been criticizing the Biden administration’s decision to send weapons to Ukraine.

“We have weapon stockpiles in places that many in this world don’t even know about,” Leavitt said. “The president was pointing out that, unfortunately, we had a very stupid and incompetent leader in this White House for four years who gave away many of our best weapons for nothing.”