War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) offered different assessments of the health of the United States’s current munitions stockpiles while on Face the Nation Sunday morning.
Hegseth pushed back when Margaret Brennan suggested “there is a crisis with those stockpiles” due to the Iran war, saying “that is a manufactured story that the media wants to peddle, and ultimately our stockpiles are great and are only getting stronger.”
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Kelly, in a separate segment, said, “Of course, we have a munitions issue,” adding that “it’s widely understood that when you attack over 10,000 targets from the air with cruise missiles and ballistic missiles and bombs from airplanes, you are using a lot of munitions, and we do not have an endless supply of these things.”
The two appearances came hours before President Donald Trump announced a peace deal had been signed between the United States and Iran, reshaping the long-term debate about the issue.
The Brennan and Hegseth dispute stems from a verbal exchange that occurred between Kelly and Hegseth during an April Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the department’s budget request.
Hegseth said it could take “months and years” to rebuild certain stockpiles, depending on the type of weapon, while responding to a question from Kelly about how long it would take to replenish the country’s defense systems.
Kelly said during the hearing that a lot of the strikes in Iran “use our best weapons, and we’re using a lot of them. … Open-source reporting has estimated the military has used an outrageous number of Patriots.”
Hegseth partially blamed the Biden administration for depleted stockpiles, saying, “ We’re dealing with the reality under the previous administration of what they sent to Ukraine and what they allocated elsewhere,” an idea he reiterated on the show with Brennan.
HEGSETH SAYS TRUMP HAS ‘COMPEL OPTIONS’ IF IRAN FAILS TO DESTROY ITS URANIUM
“The Biden administration gave away hundreds of billions to Ukraine, and so President Trump had to refill, and he has, and we have, in real time,” he said Sunday. “We’re supercharging our arsenal of freedom — building more, building faster, opening up the Pentagon, ripping through the Pentagon bureaucracy, to force industry to move faster.”
Kelly and Hegseth have been in a bitter feud since Kelly appeared in a viral video last fall, urging troops to defy illegal orders from the Trump administration, prompting Hegseth to attempt to censure Kelly. A federal judge blocked the Pentagon’s actions, allowing Kelly to retain his Navy captain rank in retirement. Hegseth has also accused Kelly of disclosing classified information.
