The single most revealing number in the tracker isn't a stockpile estimate — it's the daily ballistic missile rate at UAE, the highest-confidence series we track.
This wasn't a tactical pause or a political signal. The UAE BM rate dropped by two-thirds in the final three days before the cease-fire — a decline consistent with a military running out of operational launchers and trained crews, not one conserving resources for later.
The drone rate tells a similar story, though less dramatically: ~43/day in the Apr 2-4 window fell to ~27/day in the final stretch. Drones are harder to interpret because Iran's reserves are far deeper (our pre-war estimate: 35,000-55,000), but even drone operations were decelerating.
The rate collapse wasn't caused by any single factor. It was the convergence of three independent degradation curves:
1. Launcher attrition. Iran started the war with an estimated 410-440 ballistic missile launchers. By Day 40, we estimate 300-340 had been destroyed or rendered combat-ineffective — leaving roughly 68-135 operational. A launcher is not a missile; it's a mobile platform with trained crew, fuel, and logistical support. Each one destroyed permanently removes a slice of daily fire capacity.
2. C2 decapitation. The IRGC Aerospace Force Commander was killed in Esfahan on Day 22. The drone unit commander, Brig Gen Aghajani, was killed within 48 hours. At least one more senior IRGC commander followed. Multi-theater coordination — essential for saturation attacks — becomes exponentially harder without senior C2 nodes.
3. Production halt. The Washington Post reported on Mar 29 that four key BM production facilities had been destroyed and production was "most likely halted." Without new missile production and with launcher reload infrastructure under constant attack, Iran's stockpile advantage became increasingly theoretical.
Over the full 40-day war, the tracker recorded:
The UAE figures — our highest-confidence series — show that a single Gulf state absorbed over 2,700 munitions in 40 days. Scale that across six target countries plus Israel, and the total volume of Iranian fire is historically unprecedented for a modern conflict.
If ballistic missiles are the acute threat, drones are the chronic one. Iran's drone reserves are assessed at 25,900-46,900 remaining — an order of magnitude larger than any other category. The cease-fire pauses drone attrition, but if hostilities resume, drones remain the long-war threat that can sustain harassment of Gulf energy infrastructure for months.
Reports of Chinese missile fuel chemical deliveries (Telegraph, Apr 3) and the earlier presence of Russian drone components suggest external resupply could extend Iran's drone endurance further. This is the hardest variable to model and the one most likely to matter if the cease-fire collapses.
The two-week cease-fire window creates a pause in the data. When tracking resumes — whether because the deal holds and terms are verified, or because it collapses — these are the signals that will matter most: