U.S. Races To Rebuild Tomahawk Missile Stockpile As Operation Epic Fury Burns Through Reserves

U.S. Tomahawk Missile Stockpile Faces Pressure After Record Expenditure in Iran Campaign

The United States has fired at least 850 Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles in just over one month of Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran — a figure that marks the highest single-campaign expenditure of the weapon in its four-decade operational history. The burn rate has prompted serious concern among Pentagon planners and defense analysts, not primarily over the current conflict, but over what depletion means for U.S. deterrence commitments elsewhere — most critically in the Indo-Pacific.

The Big Picture

The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile has served as the backbone of U.S. long-range conventional strike capability since the 1991 Gulf War. Its combination of standoff range, precision, and launch flexibility — from surface ships and submarines — has made it the weapon of choice for opening salvos against defended targets.

The missile has been upgraded continuously over time, with the Block V being the current operational version. That iterative modernization has kept the Tomahawk relevant across decades of conflict, but it has not solved the fundamental problem of industrial production capacity. Building a Tomahawk is not like producing small arms or even artillery rounds. It requires precision manufacturing, sophisticated guidance systems, and a supply chain that cannot be surged overnight.

The Iran campaign has forced that structural constraint into the open at a strategically inconvenient moment.

What’s Happening

The Washington Post reported that the U.S. launched at least 850 Tomahawks in the first month of Operation Epic Fury, a rate far exceeding the missile’s use in any previous conflict, according to a CSIS assessment by analysts Mark Cancian and Chris Park.

While the Department of Defense does not publicly disclose precise Tomahawk inventory figures, CSIS estimates the U.S. retains approximately 3,000 missiles. That estimate, if accurate, means the Iran campaign has already consumed roughly one-quarter to one-third of the total U.S. cruise missile stockpile in approximately 30 days of combat.

Tomahawks were employed heavily during the early stages of Epic Fury, until the United States and Israel had suppressed what remained of Iran’s air defense network. Once air superiority was established, the rate of Tomahawk use declined — not to zero, but significantly — as shorter-range, cheaper munitions became viable.

The cost differential is stark. A Tomahawk costs approximately $3.5 million per unit and carries a range of 1,000 miles. A JDAM — a precision guidance kit fitted to an unguided bomb — costs around $80,000 and delivers comparable accuracy and explosive effect at a range of roughly 20 miles. Once the threat environment permits, the operational calculus shifts decisively toward cheaper alternatives.

Why It Matters

The immediate operational concern is manageable. According to CSIS analyst Mark Cancian, the U.S. has sufficient Tomahawks and other precision munitions to sustain Operation Epic Fury. The more serious issue is the second and third-order effect on global deterrence posture.

The strategic concern centers on the effect of stockpile depletion on other theaters, particularly Ukraine and the Western Pacific, where a potential conflict with China looms as the primary pacing threat. Defense strategists warn that degraded inventories weaken the U.S. ability to deter — or fight — a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, where standoff precision strike is not a supporting capability but a central pillar of warfighting strategy.

The Tomahawk’s role in a Taiwan contingency is not hypothetical. U.S. war planners have long relied on the missile’s ability to hold Chinese naval and ground forces at risk from beyond the reach of China’s formidable anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) defenses. Burning through that inventory against Iran — even in a justified and necessary campaign — directly degrades the depth of that deterrent.

Strategic Implications

The Maritime Strike Tomahawk, a relatively new variant capable of engaging moving surface targets, represents a particularly valuable asset in any Indo-Pacific conflict scenario. In the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the ability to strike naval vessels at standoff range would be operationally significant. Reports suggest this variant has seen employment in Operation Epic Fury, which, while providing real-world validation of the system, simultaneously draws down an inventory that took years to build.

The parallel Patriot missile situation reinforces the broader concern. CSIS estimated the U.S. entered the Iran conflict with approximately 4,000 Patriot interceptors. After roughly one month of combat, approximately 1,000 have been expended — about one quarter of the total inventory — with the U.S. producing around 600 Patriots annually, split equally between domestic and allied requirements.

The combined drawdown of Tomahawks and Patriots across a single theater engagement illustrates a systemic vulnerability: the U.S. defense industrial base, despite years of effort, has not achieved the production surge capacity required to sustain simultaneous high-intensity operations in multiple theaters. This is not a new problem — it has been documented in DoD reports and congressional testimony for years — but Operation Epic Fury is now providing the most consequential real-world stress test that vulnerability has ever faced.

Competitor View

China’s military planners will draw careful conclusions from Operation Epic Fury’s opening phase. The expenditure of 850-plus Tomahawks in approximately 30 days — well above any historical precedent — provides Beijing with invaluable empirical data on U.S. sustained strike capacity, consumption rates, and the industrial constraints limiting rapid replenishment.

Chinese strategists have long studied U.S. precision strike dependencies. The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) has developed its own extensive land-attack and anti-ship cruise missile arsenal partly to offset U.S. standoff advantages and partly to impose a cost-exchange calculus that favors attrition of American stockpiles. Seeing that calculus play out in real time — even in a different theater — will inform Chinese assessments of how long the U.S. could sustain high-intensity operations in a Taiwan contingency.

Russia and Iran’s other strategic partners will similarly note the constraints revealed by Epic Fury, potentially calculating that a protracted conflict could erode U.S. conventional strike depth faster than the American defense industry can reconstitute it.

What To Watch Next

Raytheon secured a contract in February 2026 to produce thousands of additional missiles, including Tomahawks. Defense Secretary Hegseth has conducted an “Arsenal of Freedom” tour of defense manufacturing facilities, emphasizing the need to accelerate production rates. The effort reflects bipartisan recognition of the stockpile problem, with groundwork laid during the Biden administration and continued under the current Pentagon leadership.

According to Cancian, replacing the 850 to 1,000 Tomahawks already expended in Epic Fury will require two to three years at current production rates. That timeline assumes no further major escalation and no additional high-intensity campaigns drawing on the same stockpile — assumptions that are far from guaranteed given the current geopolitical environment.

Congressional appropriators will face growing pressure to fund accelerated production contracts. The key decision point is whether Congress will authorize multi-year procurement agreements that provide Raytheon with sufficient long-term demand signal to invest in production line expansion. Without such commitments, manufacturers cannot justify the capital expenditure required to meaningfully increase output.

Capability Gap

The Tomahawk stockpile situation exposes a structural gap between U.S. operational demand in sustained high-intensity conflict and the industrial throughput required to match that demand. The missile’s 1,000-mile standoff range is effectively irreplaceable in contested environments where aircraft cannot safely operate — a scenario that applies directly to early-phase operations against advanced adversaries.

No currently fielded U.S. munition replicates the Tomahawk’s combination of range, payload, precision, and in-flight retargeting capability at comparable cost efficiency relative to its operational effect. The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family provides some complementary capability but is air-launched and faces its own inventory constraints.

The deeper problem is structural: the U.S. military spent decades optimizing for technological overmatch and relatively low-volume precision strike, without building the industrial surge capacity required for prolonged peer or near-peer conflict. Operation Epic Fury is not that conflict, but it is demonstrating, in real time, what the industrial shortfall looks like under conditions far less demanding than a full-scale Taiwan contingency would impose.

The Bottom Line

The Tomahawk stockpile pressure revealed by Operation Epic Fury is not simply a logistics challenge — it is a strategic warning that the U.S. defense industrial base must be restructured for sustained high-intensity warfare before, not after, a crisis in the Indo-Pacific forces the issue.