WASHINGTON: US forces have fired so many smart bombs at Islamic State targets that stocks of the sophisticated weapons are dwindling, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday as he previewed the Pentagon's enormous budget.
American drones and warplanes are at the forefront of an 18-month-old coalition effort to fight the IS group in Iraq and Syria, in a campaign that has so far seen some 10,000 air strikes, many of which the Pentagon says were carried out with pinpoint accuracy.
"We've recently been hitting ISIL with so many GPS-guided smart bombs and laser-guided rockets that we're starting to run low on the ones we use against terrorists the most," Carter said, using an acronym for the IS group.
"So we're investing $1.8 billion in 2017 to buy over 45,000 more of them."
The munitions buying spree -- a boon to America's massive defense contractor industry -- is one component of a significantly expanded funding allocation to fight the IS group.
For fiscal year 2017, which begins in October, Carter has budgeted $7.5 billion -- a 50 percent increase from the previous year -- to fund the campaign.
The extra money indicates not just a continued bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, but the possibility of an expanded fight against the jihadists as they reach beyond their so-called caliphate into other chaotic regions such as Libya.
The total US defense budget for fiscal year 2017 would be nearly $583 billion, Carter said, far surpassing that of any other country and exceeding the combined defense spending of the next eight biggest militaries in the world.
The proposed budget, which will be released in full next week and is still subject to congressional haggling and approval, also includes $3.4 billion -- quadruple last year's amount -- for operations in Europe.
The cash will fund the so-called European Reassurance Initiative that aims to deter Russia from carrying out additional land grabs after its 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
"We're reinforcing our posture in Europe to support our NATO allies in the face of Russia's aggression," said Carter, who is traveling to Brussels next week to meet with 26 defense ministers from the military alliance.
"That'll fund a lot of things. More rotational US forces in Europe, more training and exercises with our allies, more prepositioned warfighting gear, and infrastructure improvements to support it."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed news of a beefed-up US presence in countries close to the Russian border.
"This is a clear sign of the enduring commitment by the United States to European security," he said in a statement.
"It will be a timely and significant contribution to NATO's deterrence, and collective defense."
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