In modern conflicts, a single anti-missile interceptor can cost more than a home in a large European city, while the drone you are trying to shoot down can be manufactured for the price of a utility. Still, in just a few days of modern combat, entire armies can consume the equivalent of years of industrial production, revealing along the way the extent to which today’s war is fought so much on the front lines. like in factories.
Eating years of arsenals in weeks. The conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran has entered a phase accelerated consumption of unprecedented ammunition, one where equivalent volumes of missiles have been expended in just days to years of productionespecially in systems such as Tomahawk, Patriot or THAAD, whose cost is millions and whose replacement can take years.
This dynamic is not only triggering the economic cost and pressure politics in Washington, but also exposes a structural vulnerability: great powers simply they are not prepared to sustain prolonged, high-intensity wars, especially when they must simultaneously engage in global commitments against rivals such as China or Russia.
Rheinmetall’s warning. And it is at this point where one of the most authoritative voices to talk about arsenals has appeared. The most forceful warning comes from the largest European arms industry, whose executive director, Armin Papperger, has pointed out in a CNBC interview that air defense arsenals in Europe, the United States and the Middle East are practically empty and that, if the war lasts just another month, they could be almost completely exhausted.
The scenario he has drawn is completely unprecedented and the warning is not theoretical, but rather a reflection of a reality already visible: the demand for missiles It is “insane”warehouses are at their limit and the industry cannot increase production at the necessary pace, creating a very specific time horizon in which the conflict must be resolved or radically transformed into something very dangerous.
The paradox of cost. At the heart of the problem is an unsustainable equation for weeks: While Iran uses cheap and easily produced drones, the United States and its allies intercept with missiles that cost millions, multiplying the economic and material wear and tear.
This asymmetry, which already we had seen it to a lesser extent in Ukraine, turns the war into a kind of wear competition where it is not the one who hits the hardest that wins, but rather the one who can resist the longest by producing and consuming projectiles, and where even a successful defense involves accelerated exhaustion of critical resources.
War as a “salvoe competition.” The conflict has thus evolved towards a convoluted logic of constant exchange of massive attacksone where the key is no longer absolute air superiority, but the depth of the arsenals available on each side.
In this sense, most analysts match in which the outcome may depend on an unusual situation in modern wars: simply on who exhaust your reserves earlysince not even the most advanced defense systems can guarantee complete protection, and each impact that passes through defenses can have disproportionate strategic and psychological consequences, such as we have seen this week.
The scenario without missiles: melee. If that critical point is reached that Rheinmetall anticipatesthe war will not stop instantly, but will very possibly mutate towards most dangerous ways: increased use of conventional artillery, the emergence special operations or even less precise attacks that increase the risk to soldiers and increase the likelihood of errors or collateral damage in urban environments and critical infrastructure.
In fact, almost at the same time as the CEO of Rheinmetall discovered the future that awaits the war in the East without missiles, Israel dropped that it was time for “cavalry” on land. Because the loss of precision attack and defense capacity eliminates one of the main containment barriers of modern conflict, making violence more direct, exposed and difficult to control. In short, much more dangerous.
Quick victory or wear. Thus, while leaders like Netanyahu they insist in which military objectives are achievable and the conflict could end sooner than expected, the reality on the ground points to the opposite: a war of attrition that has already surpassed the initial forecasts and that is forcing strategic decisions under material pressure.
In this context, the true decisive factor stops being the immediate military power and becomes the industrial and logistics capacitywhich turns each week of conflict into a race against time between exhausting the enemy or reaching one’s own limit first.
Because the great paradox, remembered by Germanyis that when the missiles fail, not only will the defenses fall, the last invisible wall that contained human casualties will fall, and with it, the war will cease to be precise and will inevitably become more lethal.
Image | DoD, Bernd vdB
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