In the aftermath of a sustained air campaign against Iran, the United States finds itself confronting a vulnerability long deferred: the gap between the speed of war and the patience required to build the tools of it. Thousands of precision missiles—each one the product of years of engineering and a vast industrial web—were expended in months, leaving planners to reckon with the uncomfortable arithmetic of modern conflict. The Pentagon now races to rebuild what took decades to accumulate, while analysts quietly note that a more demanding adversary would expose the seams in America's arsenal fa