The next phase of the US military offensive against Iran is set to utilize nearly the nation’s entire global inventory of stealthy JASSM-ER cruise missiles, necessitating a massive diversion of stockpiles originally allocated to other regions, according to reporting from Bloomberg.

An order was issued in late March to pull the $1.5 million precision weapons from Pacific command centers, a source told Bloomberg. To sustain the air campaign, missiles currently stationed within the continental US and other global facilities are being rerouted to the US Central Command (Centcom) bases and RAF Fairford in the UK.

i want to give credit to thomas pynchon for teaching me that one of the purposes of the war that we experience, rather than war in the abstract, which is what i usually talk about here, is to eliminate old stockpiles of weapons. it's not a coincidence that russia started using cruise missiles against ukraine shortly after it tested it's new hypersonic missiles, which it has used sparingly, and is instead stockpiling. the seemingly unending barrage of missiles russia is using on ukraine is almost entirely obsolete technology that the russians need to get rid of, as they upgrade their offensive and defensive weapons systems. even canada is sending it's old rifles and ammunition to ukraine.

this consequently makes more sense than it looks like it does, as these cruise missiles are no longer current technology in the hypersonic era. those systems in the pacific need to be replaced and upgraded, or they're just money holes, that will have little actual success in a real war against the chinese.

the iranians couldn't even shoot down a f-15 without russian or chinese help, but there's a reason the americans are using these planes from the 70s rather than their fancy new ones, which the israelis actually are using. it's not often pointed out that america's massive military footprint is, while still capable, often using technology from the 1960s or 1970s. the computers in these devices are ancient and extremely primitive. 

america has fought a fair number of wars since 1970, but it has suffered minimal casualties, so it has all of this obsolete equipment that probably costs more to maintain than it is actually worth. while the pentagon does not have difficulty getting funding from congress, one of the few restraints it faces is in replacing working equipment, and the best way to convince congress that the pentagon needs to replace the working equipment is to blow it up so it needs to be replaced.

given that the americans are actually targeting chinese equipment, and they know that, it is very important that they replace these missiles, but i'm sure that's not been overlooked, because i realize that that's the point in the first place. 

if you want a smart conspiracy theory about ukraine that actually is probably partly true, it's that the russians were just looking to burn through supply. and if you want a smart conspiracy theory about iran that is beginning to look like it has some truth to it, it's that the americans are copying the russians, in burning through their own supply. if that is the case, and what the americans are actually doing is using old weapons up so they can buy new ones, this could go on for a while.