Ryan Grim

What do you guys make of this?

Yes, and I'll send this piece to Mac.

Yeah, it was several weeks ago.

What was it?

Oh, look, early April, I reported with Maz over at Dropsite that, yeah, that sources in the administration were telling us that they were down to double-digit.

The Israelis were down to double-digit ballistic missile interceptors.

And that's key because...

Patriot, you know, there are a lot of Patriot missile systems that are still there, but those are really designed more for like rockets from Hamas or Hezbollah.

Those are not ballistic missile interceptors.

They can be used for it, but it's not what they're made for and they're not very effective at it.

So when the war ended, yeah, the Israelis were down to double digits, which helps to explain why the U.S.

was so rapidly exhausting its own supplies.

You know, if the numbers are to be believed, Iran fired something like 1,000

you know, ballistic missiles during this 40 days.

Plus, don't forget that during the 12-day war, you know, they fired a number of ballistic missiles then.

And it takes years to replenish.

So there's just a massive asymmetry in the timeline and the scale of what it takes to deploy these things and what it takes to replenish them.

Whereas, you know, it feels like Iran under...

Normal conditions can produce ballistic missiles at a much faster rate than our kind of sclerotic industrial base can produce the ballistic missile interceptors.

And also, we shoot off many per ballistic missile.