The U.S. Navy’s Tomahawk Missile Shortage Won’t Be Easy to Fix

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The U.S. Navy’s Tomahawk Missile Shortage Won’t Be Easy to Fix

ByReuben Johnson
Published2 days ago
 

Why are the U.S. armed forces running out of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles?

Conventional wisdom says that the Tomahawk, after being such a popular weapon for so many years, should be well-stocked in the inventory.



The Tomahawk is one of the Navy’s most effective attack capabilities and has been a deep-strike weapon of choice for many commanders during conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.


But for more than two years, the U.S. Navy had been firing the missiles faster than the defense industry can replace them. According to the Navy, the opening strikes in 2024 of the escalating conflict in Yemen expended more than 80 Tomahawks to hit 30 targets.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/03/the-u-s-navys-tomahawk-missile-shortage-wont-be-easy-to-fix/

[Timber Rattler]

“The U.S. defense industry has a long-standing history of getting burned by the U.S. government,” he explained. “We naively believe what we are told when the services tell us that they need more missiles sooner and then they ask us to build excess capacity.

“So, we go ahead and build more brick-and-mortar buildings, hire additional people, build up capacity, etc. Then about the time we are ready to cut the ribbon on a new assembly site or some other expansion of capacity the USG says to us, ‘oops, we were just kidding – never mind.’

“That leaves us not only holding the bag,” he concluded, “but with a lot of bad news to distribute and messes to clean up that the U.S. government created for us. So, you can understand why when one of the services says ‘we need surge capacity in our production line’ we immediately think of the old fable about ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf.’

“This is a case of pathetic, p*ss-poor planning and an even worse understanding of how the U.S. defense industry operates.”

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