Missile Gap, a Myth Kennedy Rode to the White House, Emerging as Public Relations Win for Iran

America, according to Reuters, is running out of missiles for Iran. Counted against reports that the bulk of Tehran’s ballistic capabilities are intact, the dueling storylines echo the Missile Gap myth that President Kennedy rode to the White House, dealing a blow to President Trump in the public relations battle.On Tuesday, Reuters reported that America “has burned through most of its precision military stockpiles.” The report said that “virtually all” Army Tactical Missile Systems and Precision Strike Missiles and “half its worldwide inventory of Tomahawk cruise missiles” have been expended.Reuters cited three unnamed “people familiar with the matter,” touting an “exclusive.” Yet other press organizations have made similar allegations, repeating a fear that’s been easy to exploit since modern warfare is so reliant on high-tech, steel arrows.In October of 1998, Scripps Howard News Service reported that it was fortunate Yugoslavia had agreed to a cease-fire since the Navy was “concerned about running low” on Tomahawks. Fox News also warned that America’s quiver was near empty. Five months later, America brought Belgrade to its knees with a 78-day air campaign.“Why Is the U.S. Navy Running Out of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles?” The American Enterprise Institute asked in February 2024. President Biden’s “retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed rebels and terrorists” were raising “anxiety” about “dwindling stockpiles of select munitions and concerns” about resupply.Last week, a Center for Strategic and International Studies study based on “publicly released information,” raised the same concerns. Yet “air defense munitions” never seem to run dry. It’s a safe bet that the Department of Defense keeps the true size of its stockpiles secret.While the Iran war has “reduced inventories,” CSIS wrote that “the air-defense campaign has been largely successful.” This opened the skies of Iran for weapons systems like B-52s — seven-decade-old, unstealthy bombers that can now strike at will thanks to missiles obliterating Russian and Chinese air-defenses.Building advanced missiles, used as both sword and shield, does take time. America can’t crank out weapons the way it did as the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II. A March 2023 Pentagon order for Tomahawks expected delivery to take 22 months. Nevertheless, Washington endures as the world’s biggest manufacturer of weapons.In January 2024, the Tomahawk weapon system program manager, Captain Jonathan Hersey, told Inside Defense that he was “working with industry to increase” production. Yet he “didn’t provide a specific target increase.” It’s better to keep foes guessing.“Agreements with multiple contractors,” Military.com reported in May, “will lead to buying cheaper cruise missiles in bulk.” On Monday, the Pentagon announced that Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin were “expanding production capacity of critical missile-interceptor components,” also needed to defend Ukraine and Free China.In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned against “unwarranted influence” by “the military-industrial complex.” He’d planned to say “military-industrial-congressional complex,” recognizing that threats could be exaggerated and the public’s money wasted in a panic.Eisenhower in 1957 faced this phenomenon after the USSR launched its Sputnik satellite. President Kennedy, his library and museum writes, is “seen as the father of the Missile Gap.” Running for reelection to the Senate in 1958 and president in 1960, he pushed the “myth” that Republicans had let America fall behind Moscow.“Air Force projections of future Soviet ICBM levels,” the Kennedy library writes, “were consistently higher than those of the other services.” Kennedy “chose to believe” these numbers over what Eisenhower’s officials told him in public and private, assessments based on flights by America’s U2 spy planes that Ike couldn’t make public.The Air Force had lost its monopoly on the deployment of nuclear weapons early in Eisenhower’s administration. Touting planes as the solution to a non-existent problem was good for its budgets, military contractors, and Kennedy’s campaign. The cost was projecting American weakness at the height of the Cold War.Today, Iran’s ruling regime conceals the damage that it has suffered, acting as if America has depleted its missile arsenal for nothing. This emerging myth reduces the chances of a resolution that Mr. Trump finds favorable, losing in the arena of public relations what has been gained by raining destruction on Tehran’s war machine from the skies.

Missile Gap, a Myth Kennedy Rode to the White House, Emerging as Public Relations Win for Iran

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