Iran Faces Severe Challenges to Rebuild Missile and Drone Production– warontherocks.com

With the significant Israeli and U.S. military attacks against Iran in 2025 and early 2026, analysts have discussed and debated Iran’s ability to replenish its missile and drone arsenal. Since 2024, Iran has burned through thousands of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones in its retaliatory attacks against Israel, U.S. military bases, and other targets in the region. In addition, air and missile strikes destroyed many more Iranian missiles and drones along with their launchers. Importantly, Israeli and U.S. attacks in 2024, 2025, and especially 2026 cumulatively caused severe damage to Iran’s missile and drone industry as well as its larger defense research-industrial base. Thus, Iran’s ability to replenish its arsenal of operational missiles and drones has become an important topic for policymakers, intelligence analysts, military planners, and outside experts.

Since the Israeli and U.S. militaries halted their attacks on Iran’s missile and drone industries in April 2026, there have been conflicting claims about the status of Iran’s ability to produce new systems. For instance, many American and Israeli officials have claimed that Iran can no longer produce missiles and drones. However, Iran’s rapid recovery after the spring 2026 war reportedly stunned some Israeli officials and raised concerns that Iran may return to producing hundreds of missiles per month. For their part, Iranian officials have claimed that, despite the attacks, Iran has continued to produce and improve missiles and drones. This is likely bluster for deterrence purposes and, if anything, reflects Iran’s assembly of missiles from finished parts, rather than the reconstitution of its industries and supply chains.