US military calls BS on Trump’s ‘plenty of defence missiles’ claim

US generals have told a ‘closed door’ Congressional meeting that their air defences in West Asia won’t be able to keep up for long with the rate at which Iran is firing its drones and missiles. The stark warning contradicts US president Donald Trump’s wild and self-contradicting claims on his ‘Truth Social’ platform that the US has “unlimited” stocks of air defence missiles but somehow “we are not where we want to be”.

Iran has been launching a stream of attacks on US bases and interests in their vassal states in the region, as well as on Israel. These have mostly consisted of its basic ‘Shahed’ drones, yet US systems have failed to intercept many even of these low-cost weapons despite abundant footage showing multiple interceptors launched at each incoming drone:

The senior officers briefing members of Congress included General Dan Caine, the chair of the ‘Joint Chiefs of Staff’. They acknowledged the “thousands” of Iranian attack drones were forcing the United States and its allies to expend huge quantities of extremely expensive defensive weaponry and even then many were getting through.

Many analysts say the US only has stocks to last a week or two at best and potentially only a few days. Iran has also destroyed two US radar installations essential for targeting incoming missiles, as well as at least two ‘THAAD’ interceptor batteries. The THAAD launchers are the most expensive air defence systems in the world. The United States reportedly only has three of these specific radar installations.

The chaos caused by the constant Iranian barrage saw Kuwaiti-based US systems shoot down three US fighter jets in a single day on 2 March 2026.

Featured image via the Canary