Lethal US long-range missiles positioned for an Iran strike

The next steps in the US military campaign against Iran will commit nearly its entire inventory of stealthy JASSM-ER cruise missiles, drawing them from stockpiles devoted to other regions, Bloomberg reported.

The order to pull the $1.5 million weapon from Pacific stockpiles was issued at the end of March, according to a source. Missiles at US facilities elsewhere, including the cont­inental US, will be moved to US Central Command bases or Fairford in the UK, it said.

After the moves, only about 425 JASSM-ER out of a prewar inventory of 2,300 will remain available for the rest of the globe. That would be roughly enough for 17 B-1B bombers on a single mission. Another 75 or so are “unserviceable” because of damage or technical faults. The JASSM-ER, or Joint Air-to-Surface Missile-Extended Range, can fly more than 600 miles and was designed to hit targets at a safer distances to avoid an enemy’s air defences. 

Along with the shorter-range JASSM, which has a range of about 250 miles, about two-thirds of US stockpiles have been committed to the Iran war, the source said.

US operations through the first four weeks of the war consumed over 1,000 JASSM-ERs, the source said. US aircraft fired 47 during the raid to capture Venezuelan Presi­dent Nicolas Maduro, the person said.

The US has allocated funds to buy more than 6,200 JASSMs since 2009, and production of the baseline JASSM for US supplies ended about 10 years ago.