Empty Chambers, Emboldened Enemies: How Trump Depleted America's Arsenal

September 7, 2026

Empty Chambers, Emboldened Enemies: How Trump Depleted America’s Arsenal — and Its Leverage

As US missile stockpiles fall below 40 percent of pre-war levels and demoralized crews spend a seventh month at sea, the President sinks a civilian Iranian oil tanker and calls the war “small potatoes.” Congress is asking, in the quietest voice it dares: who is in charge, and are they fit to be?

On Saturday morning in the Gulf of Oman, an unarmed Iranian oil tanker called the M/T Kylo took a US Navy strike to the hull, listed, and sank. Its sailors, according to US Central Command, had been warned to abandon ship. Two other Iranian tankers — the M/T Downy near Kharg Island and the M/T Stark 1 off Jask — were struck the same day and “permanently disabled.” The Trump administration announced the operation on X within the hour, framed as a tit-for-tat: three of theirs for two Iranian ballistic missiles fired earlier at a US aircraft carrier and destroyer, both of which evaded the strikes without casualties.

The White House has a name for this posture: tanker for tanker. The Iranian foreign ministry has a different one: a “war crime,” in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter’s prohibition on aggressive warfare. Middle East historian Juan Cole, writing on Saturday, agreed with the assessment: the United States never declared war on Iran, and civilian commercial vessels are not legitimate targets even in declared wartime.

But the war-crime question is not, in the end, the most damning fact of this weekend. The most damning fact is that the President of the United States is doing this because he has nothing else left to do. American munitions inventories have been chewed through in six months of open-ended combat, the Pentagon’s ability to replenish them has been throttled by production capacity and executive dysfunction, and the very institutions inside the military that could have offered asymmetric alternatives — most conspicuously the Army’s drone program — have been dismantled or purged by a Defense Secretary who appears to view competence as a form of disloyalty. What remains, when interceptors run low and drones are absent and the enemy will not bend, is the crudest form of coercion: attacking the merchant marine of an adversary state, on the theory that at least it will look decisive on television.

It does not look decisive. It looks desperate.

I. The Tanker Strikes: Escalation in Search of a Strategy

The events of the last week make the trajectory unmistakable. On September 1, according to Axios reporting, US forces struck around 100 targets across Iran, including two Iranian government tankers — the first time Washington had hit tankers in retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping rather than to enforce the naval blockade. On September 5, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles at the USS aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer in the Persian Gulf; both evaded. Within hours, CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper announced the retaliatory tanker strikes and told the IRGC: “If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours.”

The M/T Kylo, hit in international waters in the Gulf of Oman, was not a warship. It was carrying crude. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called it an “illegal and aggressive action.” Iran then said its forces attacked a US naval drone attempting to enter the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning, and claimed strikes on three other US-linked commercial vessels. Six months into the war, both governments are now openly attacking each other’s civilian shipping. This is not the shape of a war being won.

“The war in Iran is small potatoes. It’s not a big thing for us. The United States has essentially taken over Iran.”

— President Donald J. Trump, September 4, 2026, as reported by ABC News

The President’s comments came on Thursday, the day before the carrier attacks. They were repeated in briefings and social posts. On the same day, Vice President JD Vance was asked in the White House briefing room when the exchanges would stop. According to ABC’s transcript, Vance said: “I don’t know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians.” He did not offer a plan.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, offered his own answer on Sunday morning, in a speech posted to Telegram: no more proportionate responses. Read that carefully. It is the language of a state that believes it now sets the tempo.

II. The Empty Magazines: How Six Months Emptied Two Decades of Stockpiles

To understand why Iran believes what it believes, look at the numbers the Pentagon has been trying, unsuccessfully, to keep out of the press.

Patriot Interceptors

Down 67%

CSIS reports the US Patriot stockpile fell from 2,330 in February to as few as 759 by July, per Reuters and Forbes reporting. Source.

THAAD Interceptors

Down 48%

The US THAAD inventory dropped from 452 to as low as 234 over the same period. There are no THAAD deliveries forecast for 2026. CNN.

Tomahawk Missiles

4–5 years

Estimated time to replenish depleted Tomahawk stocks at current production rates: 207 will be delivered in 2026, per Al Jazeera.

ATACMS & PrSM

“Virtually all”

The US Army has used up “virtually all” of its surface-to-surface ATACMS and PrSM munitions, according to Reuters, as reported by The Hill.

These are not partisan claims. They come from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, whose senior adviser Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel, has been the most cited expert on the subject. They come from Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, who told CBS’s Face the Nation in May that Pentagon briefings indicated it would take “years” to replenish stockpiles of Tomahawks, Patriots, and other long-range munitions — comments that prompted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to open an investigation into Kelly for allegedly leaking classified information, rather than to address the underlying shortage. And they come from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, no dove, who called the situation “poor planning” on CNN and warned of a “dangerous moment” for the country while Russia menaces Europe and China menaces Taiwan.

Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities put the strategic consequence plainly to The Hill: Iran has “likely” known about the munitions constraint for some time, and it “affected their strategy: to draw out the war and simply outlast the United States.” The empty magazines are not a secret Iran discovered. They are a fact Iran has been counting on.

The Trump administration’s response has been to blame Joe Biden and to demand a $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget — a 44 percent increase — to buy replacements the defense industrial base cannot produce quickly enough to matter to the current war. Meanwhile, the current war is still being waged, and each Tomahawk fired at a garage in Bandar Abbas is a Tomahawk that will not exist if Beijing moves on Taipei.

III. Hegseth’s War on the Warfighters

If the munitions story were the whole story, it could be blamed on the industrial base. It is not the whole story. Under Secretary of War Pete Hegseth — Trump renamed the department in 2025 — the Pentagon has spent the past year systematically hollowing out the human infrastructure that would be needed to fight smarter with what remains.

Consider drones. Ukraine has spent three years turning cheap, mass-produced unmanned systems into the single most consequential battlefield innovation of the era. The US Army, learning from that battle laboratory, stood up a specialized drone unit championed by then–Army Europe and Africa commander General Chris Donahue and by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. In July, Hegseth removed Donahue — a decision that divided Republicans on Capitol Hill, according to The Hill — and by late August the Army had begun phasing out the unit Donahue had championed.

In its place, Hegseth created a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, or DRPM-UxS, reporting to Deputy Secretary Stephen Feinberg. As Michael Scanlon of Military Times documented, the reorganization pulls drone authority out of the services and concentrates it in an office directly answerable to Hegseth’s deputy. Driscoll had already told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Ukraine’s integrated drone system “fully integrates every single drone, every sensor, and every shooting platform into just one single network. Ours does not.” Rather than build what Driscoll asked for, Hegseth fired the general who was doing it.

The drone story is a pattern, not an outlier. In February, Hegseth ordered the removal of the chief of Army public affairs during a broader Pentagon purge. In August, per Reuters, he fired Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the chief of US Naval Reserves, and the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command — all without public explanation. The Government Accountability Office, in a report released this summer, found that Hegseth’s cuts had gutted the Pentagon’s independent weapons testing office from 126 civilian jobs to 30, leaving it monitoring just 15 of 110 fast-track programs.

“The U.S. is behind in adopting and fielding small drones. While the Pentagon is planning a massive investment in small drones, procurement is not enough to close this gap.”

— Retired military experts on Hegseth’s drone reorganization, quoted in The Hill

This is the Pentagon that Iran is watching. This is the arsenal that Iran is calibrating against. And this is the chain of command that the President of the United States has decided, on a Saturday morning in September, to test with a war crime.

IV. The Sailors on Deck: An Open-Ended Deployment

The consequences do not stop at the flag officer level. On August 13, NBC News reported that US military leaders were “privately raising concerns inside the Pentagon and the White House about low morale and widespread fatigue among American service members” deployed for months to the Iran theater. The USS Abraham Lincoln, whose crew had been at sea for well over the standard rotation, is being swapped out for the USS George Washington. Two US officials told NBC that senior leaders worry there is “no end in sight.”

The casualty numbers are already substantial. Per Defense Department figures compiled from open sources, at least 19 US service members and one contractor have been killed in the war, with 757 military personnel wounded and 63 aircraft lost or damaged. The Navy’s 5th Fleet base in Bahrain was rendered inoperable in the opening exchanges. Twelve or more US radar and satellite systems have been destroyed.

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February 28, 2026

Operation Epic Fury begins. US and Israel launch coordinated strikes on Iran; Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is killed. Iran responds by attacking US bases across the region and closing the Strait of Hormuz.

March 1, 2026

Five US Army soldiers of the 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command are killed at the Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait. President Trump publicly claims US munitions are in “virtually unlimited supply.”

April 8, 2026

Two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan. Iran presents a 10-point plan including US non-aggression guarantees, recognition of Iranian nuclear enrichment, and lifting of sanctions.

April 14, 2026

Rep. Jamie Raskin and 50 House Democrats introduce a bill to create a 17-member Commission on Presidential Capacity, invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.

May 12, 2026

Sen. Mark Kelly reveals depth of stockpile depletion on CBS. Hegseth opens an investigation into Kelly for alleged classified leaks.

June 17, 2026

Islamabad Memorandum signed, setting a 60-day negotiation window. It expires without resolution.

July 8, 2026

Ceasefire collapses. Fighting resumes.

August 13, 2026

NBC reports the Pentagon is swapping out the USS Abraham Lincoln amid morale concerns; senior leaders privately warn of “no end in sight.”

September 5–6, 2026

US Navy sinks a civilian Iranian oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman and disables two others. Iran retaliates against US warships and commercial vessels; Iran’s chief negotiator declares an end to “proportionate responses.”

V. Congress in the Blast Radius

Congress is not silent. It is, however, largely powerless. In late February and early March, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky forced a vote on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution to prohibit US military action against Iran without explicit congressional authorization. It failed 47–53, with Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman crossing to vote no. A companion resolution in the House, led by Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie, went nowhere in the Republican-controlled chamber.

In May, Kaine forced a second vote as the war ceasefire began to unravel. He picked up four Republican defectors, including Senator Lisa Murkowski, and moved the resolution one procedural step forward, but not to passage. Senator Adam Schiff of California, joining with Kaine and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in February, put the constitutional stakes bluntly: “Congress must reassert its war powers, or it risks losing them for good.”

The Kaine resolutions are not the only front. In April, House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin and 50 Democratic co-sponsors introduced legislation to establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office — the “other body” contemplated by Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, and the constitutional mechanism to which we now turn.

Constitutional Analysis · 25th Amendment, Section 4

The 25th Amendment Is Not a Panic Button. It Is a Statutory Duty. And It Is Being Invoked.

Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, provides that whenever the Vice President and a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments — or of “such other body as Congress may by law provide” — transmit their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, those powers pass to the Vice President as Acting President. That “other body” clause is the operative one. It has never been created. Rep. Jamie Raskin’s bill, introduced on April 14, 2026 with 50 co-sponsors, would create it: a 17-member Commission on Presidential Capacity, composed of eight former executive officials, eight physicians and psychiatrists, and a chair selected by the members themselves.

Who Has Called For It

The 50 House Democratic co-sponsors of the Raskin bill include the ranking Democrats of the House Judiciary Committee. In his April statement, Raskin cited Trump’s “increasingly volatile, incoherent, and alarming public statements” during the Iran war — most notoriously the President’s Truth Social post warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” in the opening days of the conflict. Raskin, in his cover letter to Capt. Sean P. Barbabella, the physician to the President, requested “a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment.”

The Constitutional Argument

The case is not that the President holds views his opponents dislike. The case is that the President has demonstrated a pattern of decision-making — dismissing an active war as “small potatoes,” authorizing strikes on civilian shipping in international waters, purging the military officers most capable of adapting to modern warfare, calling for a Pope’s ridicule — that raises the question the amendment was written to answer. As Raskin put it: “Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows.” That is a factual claim, and it is testable. The Commission would test it.

The Practical Barriers

They are formidable, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Under the 25th Amendment, any finding by the Commission would still require the concurrence of Vice President JD Vance. If the President disputed the finding — as he would — two-thirds of both chambers would need to sustain the transfer. In a Republican House and Senate, that is not going to happen in 2026. The bill itself would need to pass through committees Republicans control, and would face a certain veto.

Why That Does Not Negate the Case

Constitutional accountability is not exhausted by whether it succeeds on the first vote. The Raskin bill’s function is to establish, on the record, that a majority of one house of Congress considered the President’s conduct grave enough to invoke the amendment’s most serious provision. That record matters. It matters for the 2026 midterms. It matters for the historical judgment of every Republican senator who declined to act. And it matters — most immediately — because it puts Vice President Vance on notice that the constitutional path exists, is available to him, and will be remembered.

VI. A Question of Priorities

Ask what the President has done, this week, to address any of it. He has not visited a single deployed unit. He has not addressed the nation on the war. He has not sent Secretary Hegseth to Capitol Hill to explain the munitions crisis. He has not appointed a director of the new drone office; the memo announcing it went out in July with the director’s name blank. He has not answered any question about the plan to end the war, because there is no plan. Vice President Vance, in the White House briefing room, said as much.

What the President has done is post. He has posted about the Pope. He has posted about the Oscars. He has posted a rendering, generated by an image model, comparing himself to Jesus Christ. He has, per his own Truth Social account, warned that entire civilizations will die. And he has ordered his Navy to sink a merchant tanker off the coast of Iran because, in his words, the war is small potatoes.

This is not the conduct of a Commander-in-Chief in a functioning constitutional order. It is the conduct of a man who has confused command with mood, and mood with strategy. And it is enabled by a Congress — a Republican Congress — that has decided, for now, that the political cost of restraint is higher than the constitutional cost of inaction.

The senators and representatives who have refused to advance Kaine’s war powers resolution, refused to hold hearings on the stockpile crisis, refused to demand testimony from Hegseth about the purges, refused to move Raskin’s Commission bill out of committee — they are not passive observers of this moment. They are participants in it. History records the votes not cast as clearly as the votes cast.

Editorial Conclusion

The Iran war has revealed, in slower motion than any of us wanted, exactly what an American presidency looks like when it is unmoored from planning, from Congress, from expert counsel, from the norms of international humanitarian law, and — increasingly — from reality.

The munitions can be replaced in three to five years. The generals can be reinstated in a future administration. The morale of a spent carrier crew can be restored with rest and clear mission. What cannot be recovered by any of those means is the constitutional principle that a President who cannot be trusted with the war-making power should not hold it.

Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment exists for this moment. Rep. Raskin’s Commission bill is the mechanism. The votes to pass it do not yet exist. But every senator, every representative, and — above all — Vice President Vance now knows that the constitutional path is available to them. What they choose to do with that knowledge is the measure of whether the American republic still has custodians. The rest is footnotes.