The US-Iran War Burned Through the Ammo Meant for China, and Japan Is Preparing to Hold the Line Alone
The US fired nearly all of its long-range munitions — stockpiled for a war with China — at Iran, is preparing to abandon its Middle East bases, and Japan is rewriting its defense strategy to hold out on its own for a while.
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The munitions used on Iran were the ones stored for China
These long-range munitions — Tomahawk, JASM, El Razum — were stockpiled for a future great war with China. In the first months of fighting, 850 Tomahawks were fired, against a planned inventory of about 4,000 a few years ago; add earlier expenditures against the Houthis, and perhaps only two thousand or fewer remain. JASM and El Razum are essentially at zero, the Army's ATACMS is nearly gone, and its replacement, PrSM, is nearly gone too. At roughly 30 Tomahawks per surface warship, what's left can't even fill out the existing fleet, let alone reload it. The conclusion isn't "we can't keep fighting" — it's "we can't keep fighting without risking pilots," and we are no longer prepared for a conflict in any other theater.
— BrianIran switched to ballistic missiles and aimed straight at the US weak spot
Iran, like Russia, shifted its main attack to ballistic missiles because they're cheap and the US has no cheap way to intercept them. The Navy's SM-2 is thirty-year-old technology: great against cruise missiles and drones, still plentiful in inventory, but it can't stop ballistic missiles. So you have to use SM-6 or PAC-3 — and those are essentially gone too, leaving Jordan and other places exposed to ballistic missile threats. Brian's judgment: every future adversary will have Iran's capabilities or better, because these technologies have proliferated. So long-range precision munitions are no longer optional; they're a necessity in every conflict. What's needed is lots of cheap long-range munitions, not a small number of exquisite ones plus a pile of ordinary bombs.
— BrianThe war ended up forcing the pivot to Asia
Brian says the unintended consequence of this war is that it genuinely advanced the pivot to Asia: after it ends, US bases in the Middle East basically won't be rebuilt — according to Pentagon people he's in touch with, "we're not going back." Future operations in the Middle East will be mainly from the sea and air, expectations for the ability to intervene in regional affairs must be lowered, and missions like escorting shipping will fall more to allies. Iran's biggest strategic goal since 1979 has been to shrink the US presence in the Middle East, and after this round the US footprint is smaller, its ties to allies weaker, and Iran has de facto influence over strategic chokepoints like Hormuz. Brian's exact words: "This regime could not have asked for a better outcome."
— BrianJapan is no longer just the US military's logistics base
The preview of Japan's new defense strategy names China directly as a revisionist state, states plainly that a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency, and names Russia too while stressing China-Russia coordination. More critical is the execution level: heavy investment in unmanned systems, including one-way attack drones launched from shore and from ships, creating denial zones around the home islands — the so-called "porcupine strategy." This breaks the old understanding: the US military defends Japan, and the JSDF defends the bases the US military uses. The new strategy makes clear Japan must be able to defend itself, at least for a period, because the US may be tied down by China, may not be sufficiently motivated, or may simply have nothing left to spare. Japanese defense spending rises about 25% over the next few years, focused on unmanned and autonomous systems, new technology and space.
— BrianAustralia bet everything on nuclear submarines
Japan is adding money; Australia isn't. Its investment plan says defense spending will increase, but apart from AUKUS submarines the real growth hasn't materialized — most of the increase goes to paying the US to stay in the program. Brian says Australia's "denial strategy" doesn't add up: the military is too small, it's unclear what it's denying, and in practice it relies on distance and on being a secondary theater to China's actions elsewhere. The submarine concept: if China hits northern Australia with ballistic missiles, Australia retaliates against the Spratlys with submarine-launched cruise missiles. But the cost is that the manpower side keeps shrinking, leaving only a small fighter fleet, a few tankers and AWACS, and a small army for border protection. If China sends maritime militia to surround Christmas Island, Australian ships have low readiness rates — one sortie would exhaust the entire fleet.
— BrianManned-unmanned teaming has proven to be a false premise
Brian's wargames at the Naval War College with senior Navy leaders produced two conclusions. First, forward-deploying a "bespoke force" of large numbers of autonomous systems is extremely costly: it takes land, people and money — possibly billions of dollars a year — whereas the traditional model is to spend money building a ship or a squadron, sail it over when needed, and bring it back when not. Robots are slow, short-ranged and can't self-deploy, so the rotation model can't be copied. Second, manned-unmanned teaming basically doesn't work: a robot is valuable precisely because you can sacrifice it, but once it's alongside people, you have to protect the robot too; robots also slow down manned ships or need frequent refueling, leading to mutual sub-optimization. Only very narrow cases like decoys actually work.
— BrianCCA was meant to save money and instead built another F-35
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft was conceived as a "loyal wingman" and extra weapons bay. But the problem: it has to be as stealthy as the manned aircraft, or it gives away the manned aircraft's position; to find targets on its own it needs passive sensors on par with the F-47's; to launch from the same base it needs runways and long range. Add it all up and the cost rapidly approaches an F-35 — Brian's exact words: "Then you might as well build an F-35, except there's a robot inside." So the Air Force opened a separate program for the next batch of CCAs, letting them launch from different locations, not operate alongside manned aircraft, and only pass information over long distances. Brian says that no longer counts as manned-unmanned teaming — it's just a kill chain.
— BrianVCs fund the weapons; what's missing is people who know how to fight
Jordan attributes CCA's detour to the absence of people genuinely close to the use case at the design stage: VCs will fund an idea that sounds interesting and maybe feasible, and then it just keeps going, without first doing wargaming and concept development with warfighters. He says some funds now require founders to have advisors, but the hard part is finding advisors who aren't just there for equity. Brian adds that this is why technologists need to be integrated with military planning early — he cites the IVAS headset as an example, saying it's obvious at a glance that no one who served designed it. Both agree that if CCA had been written into legislation from the start, with a promise to produce in 50 states, it would have become impossible to cancel.
— JordanIn their own words · checked verbatim
we're now at the point where we don't have any of these standoff munitions, which means not only can we – we can't continue the fight against Iran at the scale that the president wants to. We also are not prepared for any conflict elsewhere, especially against China.
Brian4:20
reduced American footprint, less American military in the region, less ties to allies. Iran having tacit control of strategic choke point. The regime couldn't have asked for a better outcome.
Brian19:46
This new defense strategy and build up plan really makes clear that Japan is looking to defend itself, which is a big shift.
Brian25:07
We can't really do that with the robots because they're not fast enough or they don't have the range or they're just not self-deploying.
Brian52:15
So you have to basically build an F-35 and then put a robot in it, which at that point you're spending F-35 money. It's like, oh, yeah, we just build an F-35. That's a robot one.
Brian53:21
the VCs will fund somebody's idea, which sounds interesting and maybe even feasible. And they just run with it without having stopped and said, let's go do some, you know, whatever more gaming or at least concept development with some operators and get a sense of what might be the art of the possible or what's useful.
Jordan1:06:50
Figures
| Tomahawks fired in the first months of the war | 850 | 2:09 |
| Planned Tomahawk inventory (a few years ago) | about 4,000 | 2:09 |
| Tomahawks carried per surface warship | about 30 | 2:09 |
| Increase in Japanese defense spending | about 25% over the next few years | 30:30 |
| Distance from Ishigaki Island to Taiwan | about 90 miles | 27:21 |
| Amount already spent on the CCA program | $2 billion | 1:07:51 |
| Australia's population | 25 million | 47:08 |
Glossary
- CCA (Collaborative Combat Aircraft)
- The US military's envisioned unmanned wingman operating alongside manned fighters; this episode discusses its cost and stealth problems.
- AUKUS
- The Australia-UK-US trilateral security partnership, with two pillars: the first is providing nuclear submarines to Australia, the second is cooperation on other defense technologies.
- standoff munitions
- Precision munitions that can be launched far from the target, keeping the launching aircraft outside enemy air defenses.
- porcupine strategy
- Using large numbers of dispersed unmanned and shore-based weapons to create denial zones that make an attack difficult.
- man-unmanned teaming
- Having manned platforms and unmanned systems operate together in the same space; this episode argues it doesn't hold up in most scenarios.
How to listen
Founders, investors and policy researchers watching the US-China military balance, defense industrial capacity and allied strategy; anyone working on drones, autonomous systems or defense tech should especially hear the CCA segment.
The last ten minutes or so of book and film recommendations can be skipped.