Operation Epic Fury’s cost after five days: $3 BILLION and counting
Operation Epic Fury’s cost after five days: $3 BILLION and counting
Brown University’s Costs of War project is tracking the price of the US war against Iran in real time, revealing that it has already cost US taxpayers two and three billion dollars.
🟠 each day that the war continues costs $220M for sustained operations ($9.15M per hour, $2.5k per second)
🟠 50k deployed troops’ salaries = $40M
🟠 aircraft operational costs = $48M
🟠 ordnance = $35M
🟠 naval assets’ operational costs = $22M
🟠 fuel and logistics = $15M
🟠 C&C, reconnaissance, surveillance, cyber and space = $10M
🟠 overhead = $50M
Total ‘discrete costs’: $921M
🟠 the first day’s Tomahawk salvo cost $240M
🟠 the first 3 US fighters shot down cost $270M
🟠 naval forces’ attacks cost $75M
Brown also tallied the economic consequences, including:
🟠 oil prices – up 10.4-11.5%
🟠 Strait of Hormuz shipping – stopped, trapping ~20% of daily global oil transit in the Persian Gulf
🟠 the US stock market – down $1.15-1.5%
The project did not appear to factor in damage to US military bases in the region, including the AN/FPS-132 radar in Al Udeid Air Base, a $1.1B piece of hardware destroyed by Iran on the first day.
Two AN/TPY-2 fire control radars servicing THAAD ($400-500M apiece) destroyed in the UAE also don’t appear to be factored in, nor additional US aircraft lost Wednesday
The Iran war has a way to go to reach spending on the US’s post-9/11 wars ($8T over 20 years), but is already approaching those wars’ per diem average of $300M.
For context, interest on the US’s enormous national debt, soon to reach $39T, is set to reach $1T in 2026.
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