Chris Coons: Depletion of Magazine Depth ‘Weakens the United States’ — ‘This Is Not a New Problem’

EXCERPT:

COONS: "Well, Kasie, thanks for a chance to be on again. The implications of a real challenge to what‘s called our magazine depth, or the number of our precision strike missiles and our interceptors, is that it weakens the United States. It weakens our hand in being prepared to defend our treaty allies in the western Pacific, to defend our homeland and to defend our critical allies and partners in Europe and the Middle East. This is not a new problem. We have had challenges with procuring these expensive, exquisite munitions for a long time. Last year‘s appropriations bill, where I‘m the senior Democrat for defense appropriations, we authorized multiyear procurement of several key munitions and moved billions of dollars into those lines. Frankly, when the president chose to launch a war of choice more than five months ago in the Middle East, one of the challenges I am certain that his senior military advisers briefed him on was that the Iranians were going to launch thousands of cheap, lethal drones at our facilities, our bases, our embassies, and our allies and partners, and we would use incredibly expensive, exquisite and rare munitions to intercept them or to defend against them with counterstrikes. So this is a challenge we have faced for some time. Countries like Iran have learned how to make drones that cost relatively little, and we are still using very expensive munitions to stop them."