Right, so carrot-coloured calamity Donald Trump’s war on Iran has consumed half to two-thirds of America's most advanced interceptors, the very missiles designed to prevent Iranian drones and ballistic missiles from turning American bases into costly fires.

They're mumbling about a lack of strategic inventories, military speak for: we ran out of all our best toys, and our factory elves can't come up with anything new anytime soon to bail us out of this self-inflicted act of idiocy. The Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, now says it will take five years to make it up, and that is after they’ve converted hundreds of US military barracks into modern art installations and have sent dozens of planes to the scrap heap.

Trump has, without doubt, left the US insufficiently stocked for the next conflict, and replenishment may be difficult t ...