US troops in Iran racing against the clock before running out of ammo: report

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Raw Story

March 1, 2026 3:31PM ET


U.S. troops in Iran are staring down a difficult situation in the wake of strikes that killed Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that U.S. troops are racing to destroy Iran's ballistic and nuclear missile facilities before they run out of interceptors to defend from Iranian retaliatory strikes. The exact size of the military's ammunition base is classified, but analysts and former officials who spoke to The Journal said the stockpile has been diminished after repeated conflicts in the region.

At the same time, military troops are working to fend off a series of retaliatory strikes from the Iranians. U.S. Central Command said on Saturday that they mounted a "largely successful defense against hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks," according to the report.

“One of the challenges is you can deplete these really quickly,” Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, told The Journal. “We’re using them faster than we can replace them.”

Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-iran-2675514870/?utm_source=superhead

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[UpInArms]

1. The planning phase was skipped

The afterplan was never made and …

The boys will be schoolbombing boys until they run out of bombs and bullets

[Amaryllis]

21. Planning? WHat's that?

[Retrograde]

44. Do you expect me to believe

that our stellar Secretary of "War" forgot about a little thing called logistics planning? That thing that successful generals such as Eisenhower have historically spent most of their time and energies worrying about? That thing that seems boring and detail-oriented that can make or break a military operation? Yea, I'll buy that: Hic!Seth has spent the past year firing everyone with experience or common sense, abolishing attempts to keep the military diverse and inclusive, cutting ties with major universities, and spending more time on photo ops than on doing his job. Everything's just a game or a photo-op with this cabinet.

[Skittles]

45. "Hic!Seth"

[Old Testament Libera]

50. Logistics is too "woke"

Manly bombing is the thing. Bringing up supplies is...what 90% of your force is needed for!

[Grins]

52. "Sir, we don't have ammunition!" - Trump, Oct. 2017

Fer’ real.

[C_U_L8R]

2. Gee Donald, maybe you should have thought of that

before you went and made a mess of things.

[GiqueCee]

3. And it never occurred to Kegsbreath...

... to replenish the ammo supply before commencing this fiasco in the making? As that wise old philosopher, Ron White, so sagely observed, "Ya can't fix stupid."

[dem4decades]

18. Runs out of ammo but never runs out of beer.

[SeattleVet]

24. When he was confirmed he swore that he wouldn't drink while was Secretary of Defense...

is that maybe one of the reasons why they changed his title to Secretary of War? Did that change of office title release him from his pledge?

[GiqueCee]

57. Hegseth is an extremist...

... in every regard. He doesn't just drink, he gets shitfaced, blackout drunk. And he's a semiliterate sociopath who cannot be trusted to make complex decisions on issues that potentially involve the loss of innocent lives, as well as the lives of our servicemen and -women. Just like his psychotic boss, he is pathologically selfish, and doesn't consider people he can't see or touch as real human beings, so their loss has no real meaning for him, and he dismisses any concern for the consequences of his actions.
Now he's shitfaced drunk with power that he doesn't possess the mental faculties to wield responsibly. But he wasn't hired in spite of those shortcomings, but because of them. Russell Vought's bible of malice and depravity, better know as Project 2025, specifically stated, though often couched in seemingly benign language, that terrorizing the populace, and the world in general, with extreme policies that are implemented with unwarranted savagery, is the quickest path to ensuring compliance with any future plans to establish Feudalism v.2.

[Traildogbob]

4. Let ICE send some.

They have an unlimited budget.
Remember Iraq, Rumsfeld would not send ammo of body armor and vehicle armor plates. And he said ya go to war with what you have. Families of soldiers were shipping gear.
This is the fucking republicans. Fuck all you anti war Trump voters. Boot up assholes. Take Barron with you. Booberts son has lots of time on his hands.

[Klarkashton]

5. Bibi doesn't care how many American GIs get snuffed.

They are collateral damage.

[ananda]

6. Trump doesn't either.

This is a vanity war and he's loving it ... for now.

[johnnyfins]

7. Bibi, like Donald, doesn't care how many lives,

ON EITHER SIDE, are lost. Both of these guys are in it for themselves and that is IT. Period, FULL STOP.

[sheshe2]

9. Fact...

neither does tsf.

[calguy]

35. Bibi is ready fight Iran right down to the last American.

[sakabatou]

8. *facepalm*

[NeoTrajan]

10. Sounds like they've adopted Russia's 'No Supply Lines' strategy

Hegseth isn't worthy of trust with a national military

A drunken, Fox News flunky who is compensating for his tiny soul with adolescent bravado

[pecosbob]

11. Terrible lede...U.S. troops are not 'in Iran'. They are shooting at Iran from the Gulf States.

Not aimed at the OP...just sayin'.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. I don't have a sub to the WSJ (for obvious reasons)

so if anything, Raw Story at least summarizes articles from many of the news sites that require subs (I sub to quite a few myself including Barron's & MarketWatch, but not the WSJ add-on).

[markodochartaigh]

19. I saw this and wasted about ten minutes

trying to find out if I had missed something and US troops were on the ground in Iran.
I'm canceling my Raw Story daily email. This is more than carelessness, this is incompetence.

[debsy]

20. This

[DavidDvorkin]

13. "US troops in Iran"?

That would be an enormous news story. They surely are not in Iran.

[highplainsdem]

14. Very sloppy writing from them. They apparently mean our bases in the region.

[DavidDvorkin]

15. That makes much more sense.

[highplainsdem]

16. They have a link at the bottom of the story for reporting corrections and typos.

[Martin Eden]

23. Sloppy, or deliberately misleading?

No responsible journalist would be that sloppy, or that mileading.

[highplainsdem]

34. Probably not, but it might've been a less experienced journalist using Ai, though there's no note

about AI use.

[highplainsdem]

37. Just did some checking, and they do use some AI:

https://www.rebelmouse.com/how-journalists-can-use-ai

[Old Testament Libera]

51. US Troops...

...in the general vicinity of Iran!

[progressoid]

30. RawStory tends to like their click baity headlines.

They basically "borrow" from other news sites and juice it up a little to get more traffic.

[highplainsdem]

38. They also use AI, as I just discovered. See reply 37.

[IronLionZion]

17. WSJ Headline is: "U.S. Races to Accomplish Iran Mission Before Munitions Run Out"

under their headline: "Trump says the Iran campaign might last a week or longer, but dwindling stockpiles could limit his options"

Raw Story bungled their headline

Archive link to WSJ article: https://archive.ph/t4DK4

[Historic NY]

47. Nice to let eveyone know.....Donald said this would be a 4-5 day operation

what a jackass

[Exp]

22. 'You go into an illegal war with the ammo you have, not the amount of ammo you actually need'. - Rummy nt

[hibbing]

39. This whole thing is giving me a fright

That whole Bush cabal is what drew me to find DU. Another war of choice, based on a lie. I was a much younger man then, it hits a lot harder now.

Peace

[Dave Bowman]

25. I second that facepalm.

[LymphocyteLover]

26. what does "IN IRAN" mean? We have boots on the ground there???

[twodogsbarking]

27. Was someone using the ammo jet to go to a hockey game? Just checking.

[paleotn]

29. Wish it was that simple.

We're running into the same problem we had supplying Ukraine. Interceptor missiles are complex, expensive and time consuming to produce. We don't have the industrial infrastructure to support this. When they're gone, it's going to be a while getting new ones. That's been a bugaboo with DoD for some time. If we get into a protracted war, we ain't got the stockpiles.

[paleotn]

28. Well, that answers my question from yesterday morning...

Do we and Israel have more interceptor missiles than Iran has ballistic missiles and drones? Perhaps not. THAT is a huge problem. Drones can be downed by aircraft, but that's difficult operationally. Against ballistic missiles, there's no other defense.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=21055185

[Callie1979]

31. Fucking unacceptable that we are THAT short on important weapons this quickly.

And I dont care Who or HOW MANY people dropped the ball on this; it MUST be fixed.
We need to have multiple suppliers again like we USED to have.

[dutch777]

32. Issue on ships is that SM2 anti air missile system can not be reloaded at sea. Not a total inventory issue....

...immediately, rather they need heavy lift support at a port to restock the launch tubes. I think both we and Israel have been lucky that, while the Iranians, Hezbollah and maybe others have/had thousands and thousands of missiles, their ability to get a critical number at a coordinated time on target to overwhelm the radar and missile systems like the SM2 and Iron Dome has been lacking. My theory is that they have/had plenty of missiles but not enough launchers, trained crews and coordinated command and control to take strategic advantage of their stock. If we go against the 600 ship Chinese navy, we may see what the down side of this reality looks like when against a near peer adversary not the rag tag wannabes.

[CountAllVotes]

33. MAGA make america grenades again !!

Batch of idiots!

[slightlv]

36. As an old veteran, I will never let anyone talk about

republicans supporting the military any more, no matter where I see or hear it. They will get an earful from me (tho I doubt it'd make much difference to that level of denialism). Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney were among the first to short our troops on what they need to fight a war they wouldn't fight, but demanded be fought by the youth of our country. trump and miller and kegsbreath have taken it to a whole new level.

What if Russians and Americans walked off the battlefield and refused to fight someone else's money wars? I'm reminded of that old saying "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"...

[Norrrm]

40. In his first term, Trump loudly claimed that the military was low on ammunition.

In his first term, Trump loudly claimed that the military was low on ammunition.
Told by top generals (who didn't have names).
Has he been wasting this first year ignoring the need for ammo and supplies?

After all, Donald 'knows more than the generals.'

[Shipwack]

55. "Top generals with tears in their eyes", no less... nt

[Tetrachloride]

41. i can donate a shovel or a bucket with a hole

[BidenRocks]

42. Never mind Sun Tzu,

these geniuses haven't studied Ukraine and Russia's use of IRANIAN drones!

Production was already ramped up!

[MaineNative]

43. As an ex military NCO

this is just mind numbing. I expect the Ds to take action asap, but it seems like Schumer and Jeffries might run interference. I never thought we would be here. The Ds should have called an emergency meeting.

[Historic NY]

46. WTF planned this Epic Fuckup

[Figarosmom]

48. So now we are going down the same path

That Russia did in Ukraine. Running out of ammo and bad planning.

It's all about who's at tbe top.

[BlueSpot]

49. I used to go back and forth -

Is the administration as stupid as it looks or are they really crazy like a fox? I had my bias but never felt certain. Now they've gone to war without counting their bullets first. I'm feeling pretty confident now saying it's the former.

[Aussie105]

53. He who runs out of soldiers and weapons first loses a war.

Basic warfare 101.

Amazed at the amount of munitions get thrown up to stop a single incoming missile.

Hose the sky, never mind the accuracy!

[menzmag]

54. Those hypersonic missiles were promised to Israel 3,000 years ago.

[Layzeebeaver]

56. The USA has the most powerful military in the world...

…For about a week, then we run out of ammo.

We are not geared for a sustained conflict and the Iranians know that.

All they have to do is survive - to demonstrate to the world that the US is a paper tiger underneath a veil of armour.