Iran-US Air Defence: The Iran-US ceasefire announced on April 8 is likely to make Gulf countries think again about what they buy for defence. After years of paying less attention to missiles and air defence, many states are now expected to put more money into those systems. In the United Arab Emirates, missile imports slowed in 2021-25, and spending on air defence systems fell by more than half. Their share dropped from 19.6% to 10.2%.
Qatar moved in a similar direction. Its missile imports fell by nearly 30%, and the share of those imports dropped hard from 31% in 2016-20 to 11.4% in 2021-25. Oman’s missile imports became almost nothing in that same period, and its spending on air defence systems was basically absent.
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Other Countries
Not every Gulf country was cutting back. Bahrain went the other way. Its missile imports rose by almost ten times between 2016-20 and 2021-25. Air defence also became a new item there, taking 6.8% of imports. Saudi Arabia also raised its focus on these weapons. Missile imports almost doubled, with the share rising from 12.5% to 19.8%. Air defence grew even faster, climbing from 5.9% to 13.5%.
Aircraft imports, meanwhile, have gone down across the region. In Saudi Arabia, aircraft fell from 59.9% to 39.2% of imports. The move suggests a slow shift away from very costly aircraft and toward tools that can react faster and fit changing threats better. Iran itself spent only on aircraft in 2021-25, but it may soon need more missiles and air defence too as it tries to protect itself from another conflict.
US Weapons Stocks Draining
The fighting has not only changed Gulf thinking. It has also put heavy pressure on US weapons stocks. CSIS says the US has already used more than 850 Tomahawk missiles, which is the biggest use of them in any single campaign, ET reports. That is more than the 802 Tomahawks fired in the 2003 Iraq War and far above the about 130 used in Operation Poseidon Archer in 2024.
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The strain goes beyond Tomahawks. Bloomberg reported that more than 1,000 JASSM-ER missiles were used in the first four weeks of the conflict, which cut stockpiles from about 2,300 before the war to around 425.
ABC News, using analysis from the Payne Institute, said nearly 46% of the US Army’s ATACMS inventory may already be gone. It also reported that THAAD interceptors, which help stop ballistic missiles, could run out by mid-April if use stays at the same pace
