US Needs More Munitions To Safeguard Seaborne Energy and Goods Trade

Introduction

Nations involved in international commerce must be able to protect both their homelands and their forward lines of maritime communication. Among modern powers, the United States stands foremost in this regard. U.S. history, from confronting Barbary Pirates in the Age of Sail to Iranian forces and Houthi insurgents in the Age of Internal Combustion, offers 200 years of confirmation that regardless of domestic politics, the ability to ensure uninterrupted global flows of consumer goods, energy, food, and minerals is a core national security interest.[1] Maritime energy interests are especially pronounced. In 2023, the US accounted for about 16 percent of global crude oil production and approximately 25 percent of global natural gas production.[2] This bounty makes the U.S. one of the world’s largest exporters of gas, oil, and refined products, most of which travels to customers by sea.

Defending the routes through which goods and molecules flow into the U.S. economy and back out to the world while also deterring Great Power threats requires substantial military capabilities. Recent events suggest the U.S. is at real risk of losing its capacity to consistently defend the global maritime and air commons that are so crucial to economic prosperity. Accordingly, this analysis is the first in what will be a series of articles discussing the problem then successively drill deeper into concrete paths to solutions.

The world now labors under the tensest geopolitical climate since the early 1980s when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, exercise Able Archer nearly triggered nuclear war in 1983, and the Reagan military buildup was underway. U.S. policymakers must now grapple with increasing aggression by the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) in the East and South China Seas, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and recurrent tensions in the Middle East, notwithstanding the three-phase Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal that became effective in January 2025.[3]

Although America’s role in each of these geographic areas has generally been by proxy, an examination of munitions and weapon demands during current and past industrial conflicts call U.S. military readiness into question. Russia and Ukraine combined have expended tens of millions of large caliber artillery rounds and hundreds of thousands of artillery rockets. Russia alone has accounted for over 7,000 heavy strike missiles and more than 20,000 long range loitering munitions.[4] These numbers seem like an outlier compared to recent campaigns, such as the two Gulf Wars, but viewed in a broader historical context, they are par for the course. In each case, the conflicts have long-run implications for global energy supply chains.

For comparison, the United States expended almost 10 million tonnes of ammunition during the Vietnam War, doing so at a pace of nearly two million tonnes per year during peak efforts in 1968 and 1969.[5] The roughly four million 155mm artillery shells the U.S. and EU have supplied to Ukraine over nearly three years of war would altogether weigh only about 180,000 tonnes. The American defense industrial base is still far from ready for sustained industrial war, and with history suggesting 12-to-24-month lead times being the norm for scaling up production even under emergency conditions, prudence counsels for accelerating the process (Figure 1). Billions of dollars spent on extra stockpiles during the Decade of Danger pales in comparison to the humanitarian costs and trillions of dollars in losses that conflict could bring.[6]

View the full paper (PDF) and dataset (accessible data tables).

Notes

[1] Hendrix, Jerry. 2023. “The Age of American Naval Dominance Is Over.” The Atlantic, April 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/.

[2] Collins, Gabriel. 2025. “America Should Lead the Fight Against Global Energy Poverty.” Foreign Policy, March 20, 2025. https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/20/america-energy-poverty-china-power/.

[3] “How Did We Reach the Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Deal in Gaza?” BBC News, January 19, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg4ryde7q5o.

[4] Authors’ tabulation of daily data from Ukrainian Air Force Telegram channel. https://t.me/s/kpszsu.

[5] Mercogliano, Salvatore R. Fourth arm of defense - naval history and heritage command, 2017. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/publications/publication-508-pdf/NHHC4thArmDefense_final_508.pdf.

[6] Collins, Gabriel, and Andrew Erickson. “U.S.-China Competition Enters the Decade of Maximum Danger: Policy Ideas to Avoid Losing the 2020s.” Baker Institute, December 20, 2021. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/us-china-competition-enters-decade-maximum-danger.

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