In 2024, U.S. air defenders stationed in Japan got an urgent order: They were needed halfway across the world to help thwart ballistic-missile threats from Iran and its proxies. It was the first time a Patriot missile battery was moved from the military’s Indo-Pacific Command to the Middle East, where it stayed for five months.
The next year, more batteries and hundreds of soldiers followed—73 planeloads on large C-17 aircraft. Crews from South Korea and Japan, otherwise training to fight China and North Korea, found themselves in Qatar in June, firing round after round of interceptors—the single largest Patriot engagement in U.S. history. They returned to Asia in late October.
The U.S. military sees China as its toughest challenge, but Washington has struggled to pick its battles. President Trump’s war against Iran is the latest example.
The escalating conflict, which could rage on for weeks, has drawn U.S. warships and aircraft from ports and bases around the world. American forces have expended enormous firepower already—more than 2,000 munitions against nearly as many targets in the first 100 hours of the conflict, according to Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees operations in the region. That includes bombs that are plentiful and easy to replace, but also high-end missiles that aren’t.
Soldiers are burning through air-defense interceptors to fend off Iranian missile and drone attacks. U.S. Navy destroyers have fired volleys of Tomahawk missiles, which can hit targets more than 1,000 miles away.
“It has been a recurring pattern that Centcom uses the long-range missiles that Indo-Pacom is going to need on a bad day,” said Tom Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We have enough munitions to defeat Iran. The problem is how it begins to cut into our need to deter China.”
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