U.S. Commanders Worry Yemen Campaign Will Drain Arms Needed to Deter China

U.S. commanders planning for a possible conflict with China are increasingly concerned that the Pentagon will soon need to move long-range precision weapons from stockpiles in the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East, congressional officials say.

That is because of the large amount of munitions that the United States is using in a bombing campaign in Yemen ordered by President Trump.

U.S. readiness in the Pacific is also being hurt by the Pentagon’s deployment of warships and aircraft to the Middle East after the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023 and after Houthi militia forces in Yemen started attacking ships in the Red Sea to support the Palestinians, the officials say.

The American ships and aircraft, as well as the service members working on them, are being pushed at what the military calls a high operating tempo. Even basic equipment maintenance becomes an issue under those grinding conditions.

The congressional officials who spoke about the problems did so on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about sensitive military matters.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, the head of the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command since May, will almost certainly be asked about readiness issues when he is expected to testify before Congress on Wednesday and Thursday.

Several Trump aides, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy, have said that the United States must prioritize strengthening its forces in the Asia-Pacific region to deter China, which is rapidly building up its military and its nuclear arsenal.

Those officials argue that U.S. arms support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia and decades of military campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan have siphoned off important resources from Asia. If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites in the coming months and ignites a wider Middle East war, the Trump administration would almost certainly commit more U.S. military resources to the region.

But the U.S. military has struggled to balance resources as it bombs the Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.

The New York Times reported last week that the monthlong bombing campaign was much larger than the Pentagon had publicly disclosed. The Pentagon used up about $200 million of munitions in the first three weeks alone, U.S. officials said. The costs are much higher — well over $1 billion at this point — when operational and personnel expenses are taken into account, they added.

The Pentagon has deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 stealth bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses to the Middle East. The B-2 bombers make long runs from the tiny island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where the American and British militaries have a base.

On April 1, Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its escort ships were being pulled from the Pacific for missions in the Middle East.

On Friday, Mr. Trump posted an aerial video on social media that appeared to show a bomb or missile attack on dozens of people. The president said the attack was on Houthi fighters. “Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!” he wrote.

But Pentagon officials have told allied counterparts, lawmakers and their aides in closed briefings that the U.S. military has had only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers.

A senior Defense Department official recently told congressional aides that the Navy and the Indo-Pacific Command were “very concerned” about how fast the military was burning through munitions in Yemen, a congressional official said.

The Navy’s overall stockpiles were already well below target goals before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. first ordered the U.S. military to attack the Houthis a year and a half ago to try to halt their assaults on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The senior defense official told congressional aides that the Pentagon was now “risking real operational problems” in the event of the breakout of any conflict in Asia, a congressional official said.

In response to questions about whether U.S. war plans in the Pacific might suffer for lack of available munitions, a spokesman for Admiral Paparo appeared to downplay concerns.

“The U.S. military provides flexible deterrence options to protect U.S. national interests across combatant commands,” said the spokesman, Cmdr. Matthew Comer, “while always maintaining a ready, capable and lethal force in the Indo-Pacific to provide for national defense and to respond to any contingency.”

During a trip to Asia two weeks ago, Mr. Hegseth tried to reassure allies that the United States was committed to deterring “threats” by China in the region.

Mr. Hegseth said in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, that the Trump administration would “truly prioritize and shift to this region of the world in a way that is unprecedented.”

“Today, it’s the Philippines. Tomorrow, it’s Japan. It will be Australia and South Korea and other nations in this part of the world,” he said, where, together, “we will establish the deterrence necessary to prevent war.”

The long-range weapons used in the Yemen campaign include Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from ships; a type of glide bomb called the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon; and the stealthy AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, U.S. officials say. Those are also exactly the kinds of weapons that American war planners say would be needed to counter an air and naval assault by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the South and East China Seas and the Pacific.

The weapons are in stockpiles in U.S. military bases on Guam; in Okinawa, Japan; and elsewhere along the western Pacific, the officials say. The Pentagon has not yet had to dip into those stockpiles to fight the Houthis, but it might need to do so soon, they say.

American-made Tomahawk cruise missiles are also increasingly important for Japan’s military needs. The Japanese Defense Ministry in January 2024 signed an agreement with the United States to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles. American commanders expect that Japan, a treaty ally of the United States, could use the missiles to aid U.S. forces in the event of a war with China.

Mr. Biden bolstered military relations and arms sales with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia to try to deter China from taking any aggressive military action, especially against Taiwan, the de facto independent island that the Chinese Communist Party aims to bring under its rule.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has spoken of the need for China to control Taiwan, but he has not publicly stated an explicit timeline for doing so. Mr. Trump has been circumspect on what he would do if China were to try to invade or blockade Taiwan. Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Mr. Trump, has said Taiwan should be under China’s control, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo.

Mr. Biden repeatedly said that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan against a major attack by China.

Taiwan remains the biggest flashpoint in U.S.-China relations and the likeliest trigger point for an armed conflict between the two nuclear superpowers.

John Ismay contributed reporting.