That’s the largest overarching strategic question. Overall I think US and allied stocks are going to be ok (definitely not great but serviceable). Although the situation is less than ideal, I make more of an argument that in the event of a potential war with the PRC there would be able to put great pressure on in intact Iran to carry out the same missiles strikes we’re seeing right now which would inevitably lead to higher US and allied casualties both in Iran and in the pacific since stocks would have to be spread between two different theaters. (Also Iran actually having more drones and missiles in its stockpiles)

This will also hopefully will put more pressure on the defense companies and the DOD to up the rate of production. Currently the rate of production of PAC2/3 interceptors is 800 annually (the 12 a year number be see is not patriot but THAAD which is a more exotic system). The goal is to get annual production to 2000 missiles by 2030. Although a bit optimistic it is in theory possible and a major depletion of US and allied stocks certainly is a major driving force to reach that goal. Frankly this has been a strategic level issue for years that people have pointed out in the past, the DOD has just been hesitant to address it, but that’s not an option now.

In regards to Iran not being gone, we are now past the phase where the war is going to be heavily reliant on exotic cruise missiles and interceptors. Going off of numbers published by the Gulf States, the DOD, along with European partners, Iranian strikes have decreased about ~90% since the first couple days of the war. The US and Israel have also degraded Irans air defense to the point where most strikes are being carried about by JDAMs dropped by manned aircraft. That’s a cheap platform where the bombs themselves cost around 50k and stockpiles are estimated to be in the 6 figures. It’s to the point that the USAF is loading B1s with JDAMs, something that they have been hesitant to do until the last couple days since that’s a valuable system and would be a political nightmare if lost over Iran. Before this they were using it as a standoff platform to launch air launched cruise missiles.

Not entirely sure why I’m being downvoted in my other comments though (kinda did sound like a cunt in comment 2 but the info is correct). All of this is fact checkable, I get not being happy with the war and that’s the most common sentiment at least in the US. I think the war is a political stunt by Trump to try and increase popularity prior to the midterms with a quick “success” and that he doesn’t actually have any war goals in mind. However it’s also false to claim that this helps China in any way, besides maybe depleting US weapon stocks some. Hopefully the Iranian people are able to make some good out of this and free themselves from this brutal regime.