Garrison Davis

are a kind of attrition, and they're a really serious kind of attrition.

Now, you may be more familiar with the term attrition as it applies to human casualties in a war or battle.

But to an extent, the attrition of interceptor missiles and hard-to-replace special-purpose vehicles like AWACS does a lot more to damage U.S.

warfighting capability than human losses.

A good example of this came on March 6th of this year, after Iran struck and Perseonan apparently destroyed the radar system for a THAAD missile battery in Jordan.

THAAD stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.

These are our absolute best, most effective anti-missile defense systems.

Each battery costs more than a billion dollars, and each missile they fire costs like $12.6 million.

These are part of why you don't have healthcare.

Now, we know another series of strikes in the UAE, quote, hit buildings housing similar radar systems to the THAAD battery in Jordan.

It's unclear if these were damaged or how badly they might have been damaged.

And it's going to remain unclear because the workings of these systems are extremely classified.

As of 2025, the United States owns and operates a grand total of eight THAAD batteries.

So at least one of eight is now out of commission, and two more may have suffered some degree of damage a month into this conflict.

That is not the kind of attrition you want to see prior to actually putting boots on the ground.

Now, U.S.

military spokespeople will point out whenever asked that the vast majority of Iranian missiles and drones are being intercepted and that Iran is currently firing few of these munitions than they did at the outbreak of hostilities.

And what you're supposed to conclude from that is that they're running out because we are doing a better job of attriting them than they are doing of attriting us.

And

I can't tell you who's actually coming off worse in this fight.