Posted by Joshua Scheer Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged this week that the United States anticipated Israeli military action against Iran and believed it would trigger retaliatory strikes on American forces — a scenario that ultimately led Washington to join the offensive. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Rubio said U.S. officials “knew that […]
American forces might not be able to fend off Iran’s drones.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine admitted in a closed-door meeting with U.S. lawmakers Tuesday that Iran’s Shahed attack drones have become a bigger problem than initially predicted, reported CNN.The drones are capable of flying low and slow, a facet of their design that has made them difficult targets for U.S. air defenses, particularly as the United States and its allies run low on interceptor munitions.One source told CNN that the U.S. has been “burning” through long-range precision-guided missiles over the last four days.Nonetheless, Hegseth and Caine attempted to downplay concerns about the drone threat, noting that U.S. partners in the Gulf states had been stockpiling interceptors, a source familiar with the briefing told the broadcast network.But U.S. requests for more interceptors have not yet been fulfilled.“It’s not panic yet, but the sooner they get here the better,” a regional source told CNN.Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a prominent member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, emerged from the meeting with Hegseth and Caine with a cold message: “We do not have an unlimited supply.”“The Iranians do have the ability to make a lot of Shahed drones, ballistic missiles, medium-range, short-range, and they’ve got a huge stockpile,” Kelly told CNN. “So at some point … this becomes a math problem and how can we resupply air defense munitions. Where are they going to come from?” Military officials have stressed since Sunday that fighting Iran has already drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems.Yet Donald Trump and his officials have insisted, invariably, that American munitions are well stocked. In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, the president announced that “medium and upper medium” grade munition stocks had “never been higher or better,” though he noted that “at the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be.”In the weeks leading up to the explosive hostilities, Caine—Trump’s top military adviser—warned the White House against such an attack, arguing that it could entangle America in a prolonged conflict. That is turning out to be true. The White House has thus far offered several possible timelines for the conflict, refusing to stick to just one. Per Trump’s own estimates, the war could rage for a few days, or several weeks, or “forever.”Meanwhile, Hegseth hasn’t informed the public of any such lapse in America’s defense systems. Instead, he suggested to reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday morning that the conflict was continuing without a hitch.“We are punching them while they are down, which is exactly how it should be,” Hegseth said.He did let a clue about munitions stockpiles slip, though: Hegseth announced the military would begin using gravity bombs, “which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile.”Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, warned on X that “this means we are running out of precision munitions.”
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took time from his Wednesday briefing to complain about the media coverage of President Donald Trump’s unauthorized war on Iran.“When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news,” Hegseth said. “I get it—the press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality.”In his remarks, Hegseth glossed over the reality that Trump and co. entered the conflict without congressional approval, can’t keep their war plans straight, and admitted that there was no evacuation plan for trapped civilians when bombing began. Hegseth refused to give details on the cruel acts that have already been committed by U.S.-Israeli forces, the most extreme being a strike on a girls’ school in Iran on Saturday that killed up to 168 people, many of them children.But it was harder for Hegseth to ignore Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who stood next to the defense secretary to deliver the names of four U.S. Army Reserves who perished in Trump’s war on Sunday. The names of the four are Captain Cody Khork, Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor, and Sergeant Declan Coady. Two more deceased American soldiers are yet to be identified.Lawmakers are warning the public that more Americans are likely to die in Iran.“This is as serious as it gets,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told reporters on Tuesday. “This is war and peace. They told us in that room that there are gonna be more Americans that are gonna die … that they’re not gonna be able to stop these drones flying into the Middle East. We have to have a debate in the United States Senate on authorization of military force.”Murphy’s Connecticut counterpart, Senator Richard Blumenthal, echoed the warning. “I am more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground,” he told reporters.Hegseth admitted as much in his Wednesday remarks.“More and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating,” he said.
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