After a month-long lull in fighting with Iran, the United States this week struck Iranian missile batteries allegedly preparing to fire mine-laying missiles into the Strait of Hormuz. It comes as U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll abruptly resigned amid long-simmering clashes with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over plans to modernise the military. The Armed Forces appear to be fracturing during wartime when the need for a unified vision of the future is most needed.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that senior military leaders throughout the U.S. armed forces told Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that, “prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening the U.S. military’s ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the homeland.” If anything, that may be an understatement of the true scale of the problem.
Behind the polished public statements coming out of the Pentagon, a quiet crisis is consuming the U.S. military from within. The war with Iran—now grinding past the six-month mark—has become a remarkable drain on the readiness of the military. It has stretched logistics networks and ammunition stockpiles, most notably Patriot interceptors, to near the point of depletion. And the military is expending high-end, irreplaceable precision ordnance at a rate the country’s manufacturing base cannot replenish on any relevant timeline.
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