Are the United States running out of Tomahawk missiles?
Washington has announced that it will not deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles in Germany, a decision that risks complicating the deterrence capabilities of Europe and NATO at a time of increasing international tension. The missiles are indeed one of the main US offensive tools thanks to their range of over 1,600 kilometers, a capability currently absent in the main European arsenals.
The halt decided by the Trump administration comes as Washington has to deal with a significant reduction in its long-range missile stocks, consumed during Operation Epic Fury against Iran launched last February 28. According to a late March report by the Washington Post, the US launched at least 850 Tomahawks in just over a month since the start of the joint Israeli-American military campaign, a level of use higher than that recorded in previous conflicts. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (Csis) estimates that the American arsenal still has about 3,000 Tomahawks.
“At this moment, the Americans are forced not to start a high-intensity war because they simply ran out of ammunition. They have halved their stockpiles, including the Tomahawk missiles they had, the list is very long,” explained Lucio Caracciolo, director of the geopolitics magazine Limes, speaking on Omnibus on La7 this morning.
All the details.
US STOCKS UNDER PRESSURE
According to the Washington Post at the end of March, the United States launched at least 850 Tomahawks in just over a month since the start of Operation Epic Fury. A quantity higher than the use recorded in previous conflicts, according to a assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Csis) authored by Mark Cancian and Chris Park.
The US Department of Defense does not disclose the exact number of Tomahawks in the American arsenal, but the Csis analysis estimates that the United States still has about 3,000 missiles.
MISSILE CHARACTERISTICS
“The Tomahawk is a ground-attack missile launched from a ship. It has a very long range and is very precise. It has existed for a long time but has been continuously updated over the years, and now the Block V version is the current one,” explained Mark Cancian to the Military Times.
The Csis expert also emphasized that the long range allows US forces to operate outside the adversaries’ defensive capabilities. For this reason, the US armed forces used the Tomahawk in the early stages of Operation Epic Fury, until the neutralization of Iranian air defenses by the United States and Israel.
COST AND OPERATIONAL USE
Once air superiority was achieved, the use of Tomahawks decreased. “It didn’t drop to zero, but it declined because they are so expensive and rare that if we can use short-range munitions, we do because they are much cheaper,” Cancian explained to Military Times.
According to the analyst, a Tomahawk costs about 3.5 million dollars and has a range of 1,600 kilometers. A JDAM guided bomb, on the other hand, costs about 80,000 dollars and can hit with the same precision but with a limited range of about 30 kilometers.
PENTAGON CONCERNS
To date, the main concern of the Pentagon regards the effects of stock depletion on the main global strategic theaters. “The problem is the effect on other operational theaters such as Ukraine and the Western Pacific, a conflict against China,” the Csis expert told Military Times.
According to Cancian, US strategists fear that the reduction in stocks could weaken American deterrence capacity, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, where Washington considers China its main strategic rival.
Furthermore, the Csis analyst highlighted the role of the Tomahawk in deterrence towards Beijing, especially concerning Taiwan. “With China particularly focused on Taiwan, it is very useful because China possesses a huge number of missiles,” Cancian concluded.
