Just some food for thought.
For weeks the question animating the Washington D.C. commentariat has been this: When will President Donald Trump make good on his threat and launch a second round of airstrikes on Iran? So far at least, the answer is
“not yet.”Many explanations for Trump’s surprising (but very welcome) restraint have emerged. Among the most troubling, however, is that it is a lack of the necessary munitions, and in particular air defense interceptors, that is giving Trump second thoughts. “The missile defense cupboard is bare,” one report concludes based on interviews with current and former U.S. defense officials.
The idea of the US weapons cupboard being bare doesn’t hurt my feelings in the least. Far from it. It gives me hope that the US won’t launch an, utterly insane, completely unnecessary war against Iran.
Even those who hope Trump chooses to avoid military action in Iran altogether should be taken aback to hear that eight months after the last extended U.S. military campaign ended (the defense of Israel during the 12-day war and Operation Midnight Hammer), American missile defense arsenals could still be in such rough shape.
To be sure, slow production timelines and the deep materiel debt mean that any effort to fully restore U.S. stockpiles to their pre-2022 level will take time. But eight months should be sufficient to return stocks of some types of defense interceptors to less critical levels. If the missile defense cupboard is truly still bare, however, something else must be going on.
That something else, it turns out, is Ukraine.
Although President Trump and his advisers are quick to argue that the United States is no longer paying for the military aid supporting Ukraine’s ongoing war, (they would be lying) this is only one piece of a larger story. In fact, the United States is still sending billions in weapons to Ukraine, often diverting new weapons intended for the U.S. military directly to Ukraine instead. The implications of this reality are far-reaching — for U.S. military readiness, the Pentagon’s ability to respond in case of a real threat to U.S. interests, and diplomatic efforts to end the war.
To understand the scope of the continuing U.S. commitment to Ukraine, we need to look closer. There are two primary channels through which U.S. weapons continue to make their way to Ukraine instead of into U.S. military arsenals.
For starters, there is the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which the Trump administration tried to cut out of its most recent budget, before Congress saved it. The $400 million in aid allocated for 2026, however, is a small piece of resources currently in this aid pipeline. Something on the order of $19 billion in outstanding orders, contracts signed under the Biden administration, have yet to make it to Ukraine. This new production will flow into Kyiv and to Ukraine’s frontline over the course of 2026 and 2027. Among the weapons included are air defense interceptors as well as other types of valuable munitions, GMLRS and 155mm shells.
This money was appropriated before Trump came into office, so this is not new spending. But the orders themselves are filled from the same production lines as the ones that would go to replenish the U.S. military’s own stockpiles. In effect, Ukraine’s defense needs compete with those of the U.S. military for scarce U.S. defense industrial capacity.
The second way that Washington continues to arm Ukraine at the expense of production that might go to the U.S. military is through the PURL program. Promoted as a mechanism to force Europeans to pick up the bill for arming Ukraine, the program does not directly involve U.S. taxpayer funds. Instead, European countries buy new U.S. weapons that then go to Ukraine.
We talked about the PURL program last year
So far, NATO has pledged over $4 billion in funds for PURL and two $500 million shipments have already been sent through the program, which expects to grow to $15 billion in 2026. PURL has been heavily used for specific types of weapons, including especially air defense and munitions of all kinds. Reports suggest that as much as 75 percent of Patriot missiles used in Ukraine (and 90 percent of all air defense) comes through this mechanism. Reports say two additional packages (via Canada and Germany) at $500 million a piece were being readied, and more were being coordinated by the U.S., at the end of 2025.
PURL sounds good on the surface, since it shifts the cost of arming Ukraine from the United States to Europe. However, once again, the U.S. military likely comes out on the losing end.
What Europeans actually purchase through PURL is prioritized spots in the manufacturing queue, near the front of the line. This allows Europe, and by association Ukraine, to again skip the wait, receiving new missiles and military hardware originally intended for other buyers right away. The defense contractor gets money, but orders for the original buyers, including most likely the Pentagon, are necessarily delayed in part or in full. In some cases, PURL buys weapons directly out of U.S. stocks, meaning that PURL not only slows replenishment of U.S. arsenals, but drains them further.
On one hand, yeah to the idea of the US not having enough weapons to launch a full scale attack on Iran. On the other hand.. would Usrael resort to nuclear weapons??- Which causes me concern
I do wish my lurkers would let their thoughts be known?