Report: US doesn’t have enough interceptors for war with China
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- Heritage Foundation report concludes the US would run out of interceptors to down Chinese missiles "within days" of a conflict, with stockpiles at less than 10% of what's needed for a protracted, high-intensity fight.
- Operation Epic Fury consumed approximately 1,738 theater surface-to-air munitions in its first four days to defend against 565 Iranian ballistic missiles and 57 cruise missiles, per the report.
- Pentagon set a January target to triple PAC-3 production from 600 to 2,000 missiles annually, but CSIS analyst Tom Karako said that goal — set before the Iran war — is already too low: "we just lit off billions of dollars in a decade worth of production."
- Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Defense Department announced a $3 billion agreement Monday to expand solid rocket motor production and quadruple THAAD interceptor output over the next seven years.
- Northrop's Allegany Ballistics Laboratory has doubled rocket motor output since 2021 and is on track to triple production by 2027, a company spokesperson said.
- Ukraine faces the same shortages acutely — President Zelenskyy met Lockheed Martin on July 28 to discuss licensing domestic PAC-3 production, but usable missiles wouldn't emerge from any deal until 2030.
- Adm. Sam Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in April that "current production timelines are misaligned with operational expenditures" and warned that cheap-drone threats — which the Heritage report does not model — further frustrate US planning.
Why it matters: The Pentagon's January goal to triple PAC-3 production was set before Operation Epic Fury consumed roughly 1,738 interceptors in four days, leaving the 'ambitious' ramp already inadequate. Northrop and Lockheed won't quadruple THAAD output for seven years, and a Heritage-cited report says it will take "several years" to restore Pacific inventories — a gap that opens exactly when Indo-Pacific Command says threats are accelerating.
