Have we read this Carrick Ryan piece posted 20 hr ago? My sister has posted it on her FB. (I decided to put it in the politics rather than the war thread, but it could have been in either). The numbers are mind boggling.
>>The cost of war can be counted in many ways, but strangely for a nation obsessed with its eye watering debt crisis… very few people seem to be talking about the very literal monetary cost of Trump’s unauthorised venture in Iran.
We don’t know the exact details on the weaponry used so far, but Hegseth did announce that they had struck “…more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours.”
Analysts believe more than 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles have so far been fired at Iran. Each one costs around $1.5 million (all figures in USD). JASSM cruise missiles cost a similar amount, while cheaper options like the JDAM guided bomb can cost less than $100,000 each.
But the real expense comes from what Iran is throwing back at them.
U.S. officials say Iran had launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and around 2,000 drones by March 4. Each Patriot interceptor used to knock these out of the sky costs around $4 million each, while each THAAD interceptor costs around $12 million. To rub salt into the wounds, many of these interceptors are being used to take out Iranian drones that cost less than $20,000 to produce.
Satellite imagery analysis suggests Iranian strikes hit sites hosting U.S. AN/TPY-2 radars in Jordan and the UAE, though U.S. officials have not confirmed that the radars themselves were destroyed. Each radar costs roughly $500 million to $1 billion, depending on configuration and support infrastructure.
Meanwhile, three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles were lost in an apparent friendly-fire incident over Kuwait. Each of these cost around $95 million.
We haven’t even begun to consider the costs of fuel, maintenance, logistics, and personnel deployment costs, nor the impact on the global economy.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated the first four days of US attacks cost about $3.7 billion.
According to one Congressional official, the Pentagon circulated a preliminary estimate that the conflict could cost about $1 billion per day. This is presumably depending on everything going to plan, and in my view a substantial under estimation.
For context, the entire U.S. foreign aid budget is about $50 billion a year.
Whether or not you believe this war to be necessary, the financial cost is a human cost… and it’s worth counting.