NBC News: Pentagon Almost Broke, “Running Out of Money”

The Defense Department has blown so much money on President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional war on Iran at the behest of Israel that the Pentagon’s bank accounts are almost empty.

Sources told NBC News that if Congress doesn’t OK another more-than $60 billion for the department, disaster could be ahead. Some operations might be shut down.

Yet even if the money comes through, the larger problem of attempting to force Iran to its knees remains, and along with it, the massive cost of doing so. When the war supposedly ended with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on June 17, it had cost more than $113 billion. Now that the war has begun again, that price tag is even higher.

Soon Out of Cash

NBC’s paywalled article cited “three U.S. officials, a former defense official, outside experts and two congressional staff members” in its report that the Pentagon “is running out of money.”

Rolling Stone summarized the report.

Noting that the Defense Department (DOD, unofficially known as the War Department) is a “a financial ecosystem that spans the globe,” the website reported, “it’s a bit of a shock that the Trump administration is claiming the so-called ‘Department of War’ is about to run out of cash.”

“While the outright cost of operations is one thing, the DOD is also broadcasting to Congress that it will need additional funds to restock arms stockpiles and weapons systems that have been depleted,” the website continued:

We may need to start “parking jets and turning off exercises,” one former Pentagon official told NBC News. 

In the background, Trump is demanding another 44-percent increase in annual Pentagon funds from Congress — on top of the $150 billion already authorized by the “Big Beautiful Bill” in July of last year. The move would balloon the budget of America’s military apparatus to over $1.5 trillion in annual spending. The DOD itself is requesting $67 billion in emergency supplemental funding from Congress. 

The demands have gridlocked Congressional Republicans, who are facing tough reelection bids in the upcoming midterms, and are wary of dumping billions more into Trump’s deeply unpopular Iranian quagmire. 

The website also pointed to Trump’s Truth Social post on Tuesday that pressed Congress for more money for the Pentagon.

“The United States Military has never been stronger, or more powerful,” Trump crowed:

No other Nation can do what we do (It’s not even close!). This year we set even more Historic Recruiting Records, months ahead of schedule. Morale has never been higher. Our Military’s unmatched POWER was on full display during our Celebration of 250 Years of American Independence and, like our Country, the WAR DEPARTMENT has never been “HOTTER.” 

To keep the hotness hotter than ever, Trump averred, Congress must OK the reconciliation bill that included $350 billion for the Pentagon.

War Cost

The dollar cost of the war is staggering.

The Pentagon burned through $6 billion of weapons in the war’s first 48 hours. The first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion. By the end of April, the administration said the war in Iran had cost $25 billion, a price tag that did not include repairing the bases in allied countries that Iran wrecked in retaliation, sources told CNN. The real cost, they said, was between $40 and $50 billion.

But even the $50 billion estimate lowballed the real cost of the war by almost $17 billion. At the time, the Iran War Cost Tracker put the cost at $67 billion.

By the time Trump had signed the MOU and ended hostilities, the war had cost $113.3 billion, or $1 billion a day.

“Imagine if the Make America Great Again administration had stuck to its campaign promises of no more foreign wars and DOGE agenda,” former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X over the NBC News post about its story:

They wouldn’t have wasted taxpayer’s hard earned dollars, drained our oil reserves, and wouldn’t be demanding $1.5 TRILLION more dollars for war!

Trump’s evaluation of the U.S. military’s prowess should be scrutinized carefully given the advanced weapons expended in the futile effort to force Iran to capitulate to U.S.-Israeli demands.

Years to Replenish Stocks

As The New American reported last month, in May, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was right when he testified that rebuilding the U.S. munitions inventory will require “months and years.”

Examples: 

• Land Attack Missile (TLAM), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and Patriot — heavily used in this war — will take three or more years from today to return to prewar inventory levels.
• Standard Missiles (SM-3 and SM-6) will take around two years. These naval missiles were not used as heavily.
• Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) will take several months to a year to replace. The prewar PrSM inventory was low because the system had just begun production. JASSM, though heavily used, will see large deliveries from recent procurements.

Some missiles inventory could require as many as five years to resupply.

With this week’s renewed bombing, more of those weapons have been wasted, along with more tax money.

And advanced weapons aren’t the only precious resources thrown away to keep Israel happy.

Since March, the U.S. Energy Information Administration has reported, the war has forced the administration to drain 95.9 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Total left as of July 3: 319.5 million barrels. That figure is less than half the SPR’s capacity of more than 700 million barrels.