Behind the closed doors of Camp David, a confrontation between a president and his defense secretary laid bare one of war's oldest and most humbling truths: that the machinery of force is finite, and that the gap between strategic ambition and material reality can close faster than anyone wishes to admit. The United States, having expended vast quantities of precision weapons in the opening weeks of operations against Iran, now finds its military options constrained by empty stockpiles that will take years to refill — a reckoning that no denial from any podium can fully dissolve.