America is running out of weapons. Blame Congress.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense's FY27 budget request on Capitol Hill in April. | REUTERS

Sep 29, 2026

“Protecting our nation from those who would do us harm is the first and most important responsibility of government.” That’s from the website of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat. But it could be any lawmaker or any president, Democrat or Republican. Almost all proclaim it, and by their own standard, almost all are failing — as they have for years, with no end in sight.

The U.S. still maintains the world’s most powerful military. Those unmatched capabilities provide deterrence, global influence and economic prosperity. There’s just one problem: We’re running out of bullets. In Washington, the preferred parlance is “munitions shortage,” a development that some military analysts are calling a crisis. In plain English: Stockpiles of critical offensive and defensive missiles are severely depleted and shrinking, and our domestic industrial base is inadequate to the task of swift replenishment.

Worse than that, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are dithering, as is lawmakers’ habit when bipartisan cooperation and difficult votes are required. U.S. President Donald Trump, for his part, tried to insist — predictably — that this issue was a fiction perpetrated and perpetuated by a “treasonous” media. This challenge is hardly the fault of this Congress or this president alone. But it does exist and it is jeopardizing military readiness, limiting America’s strategic options and limiting — to borrow Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s favorite word — lethality.

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