Trump denies weapons shortage but the tungsten ban suggests otherwise

Donald Trump insists the US has no shortage of weapons. But his latest move to restrict exports for key materials for munitions production — tells a different story.

Trump recently threatened “long-term jail sentences” for anyone leaking information about alleged munition shortages facing the US, accusing them of making “treasonous statements”.

He said:

Long-term jail sentences will be sought!

Yet while Trump dismisses reports of shortages, his administration has moved to restrict exports of tungsten scrap and black mass — two materials critical to weapons production.

Depleted supplies of tungsten

According to Gavin D. J. Harper from the University of Birmingham, modern militaries rely heavily on tungsten, a material used in weapons production. He recently wrote about tungsten shortages during the war on Iran.

Amid the geopolitical turmoil that is unfolding in the Middle East, there is a newfound gargantuan appetite for tungsten, with every bomb, missile and kinetic interceptor further draining stockpiles.

This presents an intractable problem for the defence industry. There has been a 12% increase in the use of military tungsten this year alone – in helicopters, fighter jets and munitions. This is hard to accommodate in a market with no availability.

If the US truly has an “unlimited supply” of missiles, as Trump claims, there should be little reason to restrict exports of recycled tungsten scrap.

Scrap is typically melted down and reused to supplement mined ore. Restricting its export suggests the opposite of abundance: that the military is concerned about maintaining supplies for weapons production.

Years to get back to pre-war levels

According to the Financial Times (FT), the American weapons manufacturers – Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon — are reporting surging sales as the US expands spending to replenish its missile stockpiles and put its defence industrial base on a ‘war footing’.

However, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Washington-based think tank CSIS, said the figures behind rebuilding US stockpiles is sobering.

Cancian said that, for Patriot missiles, even with expanded production, recovery will probably take about three years to get back to pre-war levels. And then it will take several years after that to reach the levels where war planners actually want to be.

The result is a prolonged period of reduced inventories rather than a quick recovery.

In the same video clip, Tom Karako, director of the CSIS Missile Defense Project, describes the situation as:

generational annihilation of our theater missile defense capability. It’s going to take years to get back there.

More warmongering from Trump

So the answer to depleted stocks has been more warmongering by Trump’s allies like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) – an arms industry-favourite think tank.

Bradley Bowman, a senior fellow at FDD, said in an interview that the U.S. needed more spending and more confrontation, and this munition depletion was a “silver lining” showing  Americans that they need to “put our money and our actions where our mouth is.”

Bowman said the US military has been “seriously degraded” by the Iran war, but he did not call for restraint. Instead, he warned that China, Russia and North Korea are “cooperating across all domains of power” and that the US must attack their assistance to Iran.

If Washington sits on its hands and doesn’t attack this assistance that China and Russia are giving Iran,” Bowman said, “it’s going to simply exacerbate the munitions crisis.

He criticized the Pentagon for ordering only 37 THAAD interceptors in fiscal year 2026 and just 12 the year before.

In short, Trump says the U.S. has unlimited missiles while his administration just banned exports of tungsten scrap, a metal without which you cannot make missiles.

His think tank allies say the solution to depleted stockpiles is more war, more spending, and more confrontation with China, Russia, and North Korea all at once.

By The Canary