In Iran, America’s Military Readiness Takes a Costly Hit

US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Iran had shot down a “highly sophisticated” Apache helicopter near the coast of Oman. The United States and Iran have since reentered an escalatory cycle, with Trump threatening on Thursday to hit Iran “very hard,” including seizing Kharg Island and the country’s energy infrastructure.

The incident was the latest display of Iran’s degraded military. Since the war started in February, Iran has mostly relied on cheaper weapons and defense systems to damage or destroy advanced US military platforms. And the Trump administration has consistently retaliated with air strikes on Iranian targets. But with each passing day, US military readiness is taking a hit.

In addition to the Middle East conflict, the US military has been engaged in various operations in the Western Hemisphere, ranging from the Venezuela operation earlier this year to the ongoing boat strikes in the Caribbean to the president teasing a potential excursion in Cuba. Once the war with Iran is over, it is likely to struggle to recover on the administration’s timelines.

Much of the coverage of the war’s impact has focused on the vital issue of munitions stocks, largely omitting other key areas where the US military is likely to see long-term impacts from the second Trump administration’s wars and military operations around the globe. These include unexpected and extended deployments for service members and their families, a potential future reduction in the recruitment and retention of troops across the joint force, and stressed aging platforms.

Stretched Thin

Trump did not wait for the US military operation in Venezuela to conclude before threatening to annex Greenland. And mere weeks later, the United States was moving air and naval assets to the Middle East to degrade the Iranian regime’s nuclear and military capabilities. Before long, the United States was conducting air strikes, imposing a counter-blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, and reportedly considering sending ground forces into the country. Meanwhile, the president began musing about US forces making a “stop by Cuba.”

For years, Trump has criticized previous administrations’ appetite for risk pertaining to the use of force. But his administration appears to view US military capabilities as virtually limitless, choosing to deploy them continuously and without regard for the relative strategic value of the target. And though the US military has tremendous capabilities across different domains, there are short- to medium-term trade-offs and long-term readiness implications of the administration’s use of force—especially given the manner and frequency by which the administration has been wielding it. The administration’s policies, however, seem to discount these trade-offs as minor and presume readiness as either unlimited or easily replenished.

But while the United States is deploying its military might, China is rapidly modernizing its military across all domains, including air defense, surface and undersea capabilities, and nuclear deterrence. The People's Republic of China (PRC) government aims to possess the military capabilities to forcefully reunify with Taiwan by 2027 if other means of doing so fail, though its preference is not to resort to the military option. If deterring and competing with Beijing is still a goal for Washington (though it is clear that it is not the main goal), then ongoing US operations will stymie its ability to do so. Other contingencies may also require a military response, which will become more complicated if that tool is overutilized.

The operational success of the administration’s recent campaigns may have enforced the view that there are no major military downsides to the use of force. But for an expansive, modern, and highly capable military like the US joint force, readiness hits are cumulative, while trade-offs are immediate. Moving large assets like aircraft carriers from one theater to another takes time and can be resource intensive. Marine Corps Commandant General Eric Smith noted that Iran operations have left a “gap” in the service’s capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, which could delay or complicate operations there.

If the United States continues to conduct operations in multiple theaters across the globe, it will find itself stretched thin as it diverts platforms from one to another. Indeed, the second- and third-order effects of these operations are already manifesting elsewhere, including in a reported delay in weapons deliveries to European allies. As a result, even if the war with Iran were to end soon—and that does not seem likely—its results are likely to reverberate for years to come.

A Corrosion of Capabilities

The more fundamental impact will be to long-term readiness, which includes personnel and assets. In March, public reports estimated the dollar amount of the damage inflicted on US facilities in the Middle East to be $800 million. When the war is declared over, the United States will need to devote resources, manpower, and, crucially, time to rebuild those installations.

The United States has also been using its stocks of expensive Tomahawk missiles at a higher rate than in previous conflicts to counter Iran’s much cheaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and missiles. These stocks will take time and significant resources to reconstitute. A number of expensive and capable platforms, including MQ-9s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones, were also lost within weeks of the conflict starting—adding to future costs.

The USS Gerald R. Ford encapsulates the challenges of extended deployments and provides anecdotal evidence for the toll such operations inflict on service members and assets. The carrier was at sea for 11 months, the longest such deployment since the Vietnam War. After supporting the operation in Venezuela, the carrier sailed to the Red Sea to participate in the Iran war. A few weeks later, a fire broke out, injuring a number of sailors and damaging berthing, and the ship was moved to Crete for repairs.

In their time at sea, the 4,000-person carrier crew experienced plumbing issues that left toilet systems plagued with frequent clogging and created long lines. Such a challenge, combined with a long deployment, frequent issues, and physical and mental health injuries, took a toll on the crew. But their experiences are not entirely unique. If unaddressed, these issues can affect recruitment and retention in the long term. And missed maintenance cycles can accelerate the corrosion of expensive assets. As of this writing, the USS Ford and its crew have ended their lengthy deployment.

A less obvious part of the US military’s effectiveness comes from what its adversaries know about its capabilities, techniques, and procedures, and—equally crucially—what they do not know about them. The US military has historically taken important steps to strategically conceal and reveal these, which has allowed it to influence the calculus of its adversaries with regard to deterrence and potential conflict. While the overwhelming success at the operational and tactical levels of recent campaigns could strengthen deterrence, Washington has also demonstrated its weaknesses—revealing how the United States fights and what capability gaps exist.

Readiness takes time to reconstitute. This understanding is partially why previous US administrations have weighed the pros and cons and evaluated the trade-offs of various courses of action, often deciding to use military capabilities sparingly and only after exhausting other option such as diplomacy and sanctions. The Trump administration, however, appears to view the military as the first resort.

Much of the discussion of the impact of the Iran war has focused on the administration’s shifting objectives, the role of Congress, the legality of the war, the dollar amount spent, the impact on the global economy, and the casualties—from US service members to civilians in Iran and the broader region. But the demands of the administration’s conflicts on the force have not received the attention they merit. These considerations—from the impact of joint force morale on later recruitment and retention to the time and resources it will take to rebuild military assets—should be part of the national debate on Trump’s use of force. If Americans want a mighty military capable of advancing national security, resources must be wisely allocated.