{"id":327326,"date":"2026-05-25T07:28:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T07:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=327326"},"modified":"2026-05-27T07:43:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:43:34","slug":"u-s-indefinitely-suspends-urgently-needed-tomahawk-missile-deliveries-to-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=327326","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Indefinitely Suspends Urgently Needed Tomahawk Missile Deliveries to Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Military Watch Magazine \u2013 May 24, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The United States has indefinitely suspended the delivery of Japan\u2019s first 400 RGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles, due to serious shortages of the missiles in the U.S. Navy that have resulted from the 39 day U.S. assault on Iran. The Financial Times,<\/em> citing \u201cseveral people familiar with the discussions\u201d, reported that U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth informed his Japanese counterpart, Shinjiro Koizumi, about the delay earlier in May. Commenting on the delay,\u00a0Asia security expert at the American Enterprise Institute\u00a0Zack Cooper observed:\u00a0\u201cDespite repeated promises from top administration officials that they would prioritise Asia, the Pentagon is now giving precedence to the Middle East… Given the lengthy timelines for munitions production, Asian allies and partners will continue to feel the impact of the Iran war long after it ends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Navy was by the final week of March estimated to have\u00a0expended<\/a>\u00a0close to 1,000 of Tomahawk cruise missiles, of a total arsenal of between 3,000 and 4,500 in its total inventory.\u00a0Pentagon sources at the time raised serious concern regarding the rapid depletion of of the arsenal, with officials speaking to\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>stressing that the issue of depletion of scarce and high cost munitions types has been a matter of growing importance for the Department of War.\u00a0Analysts have\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. launched attacks on more than 6,000 Iranian targets in the first 10 days of attacks alone, almost all using costly\u00a0beyond visual range weaponry<\/a>. The Tomahawk is the U.S. Navy\u2019s primary weapon for medium and long range land attack roles, and is integrated onto destroyers, cruisers, and attack submarines. The missile in the late 2010s began to also be integrated onto ground-based launchers.<\/p>\n

The Japanese destroyer JS\u00a0Chokai<\/em>\u00a0in March became the first<\/a> in the country\u2019s history to complete crew training and ship modification to enable the employment of Tomahawk missiles. Although the U.S. and Australia have for decades integrated Tomahawks onto their AEGIS destroyers, with South Korea having integrated indigenous cruise missile types onto its own, Japanese doctrine has since the early Cold War years emphasised the use of destroyers for anti-submarine warfare and air and missile defence duties, rather than for land attack roles. This has rapidly changed from the late 2010s, however, as Japan has procured assets optimised for launching deep strikes into hostile territory.\u00a0Japan\u2019s transition towards fielding assets better optimised for offensive operations has fuelled considerable controversy domestically due to the country\u2019s pacifist constitution, but has received considerable support in the Western world.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Navy has in previous years procured Tomahawk missiles at rates of approximately 50 per year, with the low rate of production meaning that recovering stocks of thousands of depleted missiles could take several years even with projected increases in production and reductions to exports. The fallout from the war with Iran has seriously depleted stockpiles of multiple types of armaments, with types that were particularly exhausted including\u00a0Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM)<\/a>, Patriot, THAAD, SM-3, and SM-6 air defence interceptors, and GBU-57 penetrative bombs, among others. Many of these were depleted to even greater extents than Tomahawk cruise missile stockpiles. Analysts have thus raised serious questions regarding the blunting of the U.S. Armed Forces\u2019 ability to wage high intensity conflicts in future.<\/p>\n

Japan is one of multiple clients for U.S. defence products that has seen equipment deliveries seriously delayed as a result of severe post-war shortages. Acting U.S. Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao on May 22 confirmed that the delivery of $14 billion worth of defence equipment to the Republic of China Armed Forces had been temporarily suspended<\/a>, which is expected to exacerbate the already considerable delays to defence supplies. Outstanding backlogs of undelivered U.S. military equipment to the Republic of China Armed Forces had by\u00a0December 2025\u00a0already reached over $21.45 billion.\u00a0Japan had also faced serious issues with deliveries long before the war began, with the Japanese government Board of Audit having revealed in January that military equipment worth approximately 1.1 trillion yen ($6.9 billion) purchased from the U.S. under the Foreign Military Sales program more than five years ago had yet to be delivered<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Washington\u00a0previously informed<\/a>\u00a0several of its European allies to expect delays in military equipment deliveries due to the severe depletion of during\u00a0the conflict, while from late March multiple reports also indicated that the Department of War planned to redirect military equipment supplies originally designated to arm Ukraine for its war effort against Russia to instead support the war effort against Iran. Secretary Hegseth at the time emphasised that replenishing U.S. arsenals depleted during attacks on Iran took precedence over supplying Ukraine.\u00a0The U.S. Armed Forces have also withdrawn stockpiles deployed in strategically key locations abroad, with a notable example being the\u00a0withdrawal of THAAD<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Patriot<\/a>\u00a0air defence systems from South Korea specifically for redeployment to the Middle East.\u00a0This has fuelled calls in Seoul<\/a>, including from President Lee Jae-myung, to limit reliance on the United States for the country\u2019s security.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having fired nearly 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles in its recent clash with Iran, the U.S. has been forced to suspend the delivery of 400 much needed Tomahawks to Japan. This will seriously undermine trust in U.S. promises to deliver to its allies. If a 39-day war with Iran can so weaken the U.S., how will it fare in a prolonged war with Russia and\/or China? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":326320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,51,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-Iran","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=327326"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327330,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327326\/revisions\/327330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/326320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=327326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=327326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=327326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}