Iran War: How Cheap Drones Bankrupt Rich Militaries

RioTimes Deep Analysis | Series: The Global Lens

The United States has spent more on munitions in 35 days than most countries spend in a decade. Iran has spent a fraction of that — and is winning the attrition war. The cost asymmetry reshaping modern warfare has implications far beyond the Persian Gulf.

The Arithmetic of Attrition

Thirty-five days into the US-Israeli campaign against Iran — with CENTCOM reporting the cumulative destruction of 19 Iranian ships, one submarine, and nearly 2,000 targets — a simple arithmetic problem has emerged that no amount of technological superiority can solve. According to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), US and Israeli forces expended over 11,000 munitions in just the first sixteen days — precision-guided missiles, cruise missiles, GPS-guided bombs, and interceptor rounds costing $100,000 to over $2 million per unit. A single Tomahawk cruise missile costs approximately $2 million. A Standard Missile-6 interceptor runs about $4.3 million. On April 3, Iran shot down a US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle — a $100 million aircraft — adding a new dimension to the cost equation.

Iran is responding with mass-produced one-way attack drones. A Shahed-136 — the workhorse of Iran’s fleet — costs an estimated $20,000-$50,000 per unit. For every dollar Iran spends on offense, the United States spends ten, twenty, or fifty dollars defending against it. The defender is going broke faster than the attacker. RUSI’s assessment was blunt: battlefield dominance matters less than the industrial capacity to replenish critical stockpiles.

The Industrial Base Is Not Built for This

The expenditure rate has exposed a vulnerability that defense analysts warned about for years: the United States does not have the industrial base to sustain a high-intensity conflict. After 1991, the US military optimized for precision over volume — smaller arsenals of increasingly sophisticated weapons, manufactured in limited quantities by a consolidated defense industry. The logic made sense against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, where one precision strike replaced a hundred unguided bombs. It does not make sense against an adversary that can absorb losses and keep fighting.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte quantified the problem: Russia is outproducing the entire NATO alliance in munitions by four-to-one. That figure predates the Iran conflict. The Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines has been tracking percentage depletion of US-Israeli-Allied stockpiles since the war began, calculating days remaining before full depletion of key systems. Their analysis shows a coalition approaching hard constraints on its ability to sustain operations at current intensity.

The Minerals Inside the Missiles

The replenishment problem is not simply about factory capacity. It is a materials problem — and the materials are controlled by a geopolitical adversary. The Payne Institute calculated the aggregate mineral consumption through the first weeks of conflict across five major weapons systems: approximately 72,500 kg of steel, 59,300 kg of copper, 25,400 kg of zinc, 3,850 kg of tungsten, 28,700 kg of propellant, and 10,500 kg of explosive fill.

Tungsten — essential for kinetic energy penetrators, armor-piercing munitions, and high-temperature missile components — is the clearest bottleneck. China controls approximately 80% of global production and has been tightening export controls. China FOB tungsten prices surged 129% in Q1 2026, according to Argus Media. At least one major global engineering firm has begun prioritizing defense customers after China cut off its supply. Antimony — critical for ammunition primers, tracers, and flame-retardant compounds — faces even tighter constraints under China’s expanding export-license regime.

The Minor Metals Squeeze

Beyond the headline commodities, niche materials indispensable to the defense supply chain are hitting crisis levels. Rhenium — used in superalloys for jet engines and missile systems — has surged to decade-high prices as the global market moves into structural deficit. Hafnium — used in nuclear reactor control rods and aerospace — is at record highs after Chinese customs data showed exports collapsing from 5,001 kg in January 2025 to just 499 kg by September — a 90% decline in nine months.

These are small markets by dollar volume, which is precisely what makes them vulnerable. A single large defense procurement contract can consume a significant fraction of annual global supply. When multiple nations simultaneously attempt to rebuild depleted stockpiles, the math does not work. Defense buyers will be prioritized; industrial, aerospace, and electronics users will face shortages. For Latin America’s critical minerals sector — from Brazilian rare earths to Chilean lithium and Argentine tungsten deposits — the supply crunch is creating unprecedented strategic value.

The China Dependency Loop

The strategic absurdity deserves explicit articulation. The United States is fighting a war requiring continuous expenditure of advanced munitions. Replacing those munitions requires tungsten, antimony, rare earths, gallium, and germanium — predominantly sourced or processed by China. China is simultaneously providing intelligence support to Iran and tightening export controls on the very materials the US needs to keep fighting. Building alternative mining and processing capacity outside China requires years — timelines measured in the better part of a decade, not the weeks that define a military conflict.

Rheinmetall has invested €500 million into a new artillery shell facility at Unterlüß, Germany, plus thirteen other expanded European plants — projecting 140,000 155mm shells in 2026, ramping to 350,000 by 2027. But artillery shells are not the interceptors and cruise missiles being consumed in the Persian Gulf. Different weapons, different supply chains, different timelines. And every round Rheinmetall produces requires antimony-based powders whose supply China increasingly controls.

What to Watch

Operational tempo. Any reduction in the pace of US air and missile strikes — measured by sortie rates, satellite imagery, or Pentagon briefing cadence — would signal that stockpile constraints are becoming operationally binding.

China export controls. Further tightening on defense-critical minerals — particularly rare earths and antimony — would represent a deliberate escalation with implications far beyond Iran. The EV and renewable energy sectors would face collateral damage.

Tungsten and antimony prices. These are the real-time indicators of supply-chain stress. Sustained increases beyond current levels would indicate the defense-industrial complex is competing with itself for scarce materials — benefiting mining companies but threatening military readiness.

Defense spending bills. The size and composition of any emergency appropriation — whether it prioritizes immediate munitions procurement or longer-term industrial base investment — will reveal how seriously policymakers treat the replenishment problem. Iran’s strategy was never to outfight the United States. It was to outlast it. Thirty-five days in — with the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock ticking and Congress yet to authorize the operation — the arithmetic is on Tehran’s side. The future of warfare belongs not to the most advanced weapons but to the most producible ones — and the countries that control the minerals that make them.