Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way? Without a war US would still have aircraft carriers, they would just be floating somewhere else.
On the other side, it seems like this is not tracking interceptor costs (presumably due to it being classified), which have certainly been used extensively and are extremely expensive. For that matter i doubt we have a very clear picture of how much ordinance has been used in general.
[To be clear, im not doubting war is very expensive]
bubblewand 29 minutes ago [-]
A carrier operating at sea on the other side of the world is a ton more expensive than a carrier in port at home. The Ford in particular would probably be in port now if not for these back-to-back expensive adventures, they’ve been deployed for a remarkably long time now.
(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
lefstathiou 24 minutes ago [-]
Carriers aren't meant to hang out at port at home. The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.
Retric 11 minutes ago [-]
We have surplus carriers specifically to allow them to average a large percentage of their time at home unlike container ships who spend the vast majority of their time in service. Many systems that are both bespoke and complex means lots and lots of maintenance issues.
Sure the Navy can Airlift in parts etc, but that’s obviously very expensive and less obviously more dangerous.
adriand 9 minutes ago [-]
> The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.
But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.
The idea that the war isn’t costing money for personnel because those people would be doing something anyway makes no sense. They could be doing something else. In fact, they could be doing something that increases the wealth and wellbeing of the world, rather than destroying things. So from that perspective, the cost is far higher than what is shown here.
Then there’s the loss of innocent lives. It would be unconscionable to put a price tag on the lives of dozens of Iranian girls killed when their school was flattened and to show it on this website, and yet, this is not “free” either.
bawolff 4 minutes ago [-]
> But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.
Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.
Right now Iran is harrasing traffic. Previously the Houthis, generally considered an Iranian proxy, were harrasing traffic. Its all kind of the same war, this is just the end game.
idontwantthis 12 minutes ago [-]
They aren't all deployed at all times and the Ford is more than overdue to be in Port. The sailors are notably suffering on this deployment and there is a ton of deferred maintenance.
bawolff 26 minutes ago [-]
True.
Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.
eschulz 21 minutes ago [-]
Right, consider the personnel costs that are displayed here. They were already getting paid this past weekend either way (admittedly the military may have had to hire some last minute contractors to help with the operation).
1970-01-01 16 minutes ago [-]
Yes, the actual accounting is quite poor and makes bad assumptions. Don't use this info for anything important or serious.
blktiger 26 minutes ago [-]
I think that's true, but I like that this site includes a "ESTIMATED MUNITIONS & EQUIPMENT COSTS" section that shows the value of actual, expended munitions which are all one-time costs directly resulting from the war.
bawolff 20 minutes ago [-]
Seems like a massive understatement given how much of this war has been shooting down iranian missiles. According to wikipedia, a single patriot missile cost 4 million, and you often have to use multiple to get a succesful shoot down.
butILoveLife 29 minutes ago [-]
Maybe, its opaque how its calculated.
But you are keeping people on high alert, refueling further away, etc...
JohnTHaller 20 minutes ago [-]
Iran probably wouldn't have blown up the $300m radar installation if we hadn't randomly attacked them.
1234letshaveatw 7 minutes ago [-]
history says otherwise
tw04 3 minutes ago [-]
History really doesn’t say otherwise. Tensions were mostly cooling after the Obama nuclear deal.
Now the message we’ve told the world is: If you don’t want to eventually be at risk of the US attacking you, you better be nuclear armed.
1234letshaveatw 32 seconds ago [-]
because enriching uranium worked out so well for Iran?
kingkawn 22 minutes ago [-]
Yes but right now it’s doing this war. It can’t be anywhere else, so the costs are for this deployment specifically.
bawolff 18 minutes ago [-]
I think when people are asking about the cost of a war, they are asking about excess costs. How much extra money would be saved if the war didn't happen.
This seems really low considering one of the early warning radars taken out cost around $1bil on its own.... and it's possible a second one was at least damaged. (one in Qatar the other in Bahrain)
roughly 29 minutes ago [-]
Next time someone asks how we're going to pay for, eg, free school lunches, keep this site in mind.
BJones12 22 minutes ago [-]
Given 50 million schoolkids in the US and a cost per meal per child of $4, the current number represents 10 meals. At 1 meal a day that would be 2 school weeks, at 2 meals a day that would be 1 school week.
roughly 10 minutes ago [-]
We've been at this for 2.5 days, and the president is suggesting this could last a month or more.
I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.
sheikhnbake 16 minutes ago [-]
2 school weeks of lunches for less than a week of war costs is a pretty good argument for school lunches. Especially as costs of this start to balloon the longer it goes on.
rkal23 9 minutes ago [-]
Maybe it will be offset by selling LNG at 50% higher prices to the dumb Europeans. Blowing up Nordstream was the first step, Qatar stopping LNG production the second. Perhaps take Greenland while the EU is completely dependent.
(Civilian casualty ratios in recent conflicts and declared wars)
rebolek 23 minutes ago [-]
Yeah but without the attack, Iran would have nuclear weapons in two years! Netanyahoo has been saying this for almost fifty years, si it must be true!
lyu07282 3 minutes ago [-]
At this point the media apparatus that shaped all these people's brains in the comments here must've cost more than the wars they simp for.
hk__2 4 minutes ago [-]
*for the US.
goestoo 25 minutes ago [-]
Why are the fonts so small? I have a hard time reading anything.
butILoveLife 30 minutes ago [-]
We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
I suppose pick either, and it was successful.
My personal polymarket says we wont get either. Trump and Israel ruin their reputation. But reputation matters close to 0 in international relations, which is why they don't care.
avidiax 21 minutes ago [-]
> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
> We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
Neither of those things is a guaranteed outcome of this. Depending on who you ask, it's not even a likely outcome.
The IRGC remains the most powerful group in Iran. Probably a military junta is a more likely outcome, plus or minus a civil war to establish it.
viccis 22 minutes ago [-]
There's next to no chance that whatever comes out of the end of this will be a "liberal democratic Iran government". Obama started a route in that direction with the lowered sanctions and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from 2015. Iran having a democratic government doesn't really help the GOP war hawks so of course they trashed it. The same happened with North Korea in the 90s with the Agreed Framework that had some promise before GWB torpedoed it to please his oinking base.
I also think that nuclear powers mean regional stability. Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 90s and we saw what happened there.
roughly 25 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunately, I think "Theocratic Iran with the bomb" is on the "good" side of the distribution of potential outcomes here.
martythemaniak 33 minutes ago [-]
Why is the US at war?
tarkin2 12 minutes ago [-]
Because, like Venezuala, they were selling their oil to China, which would allow China to attack Taiwan and take the US's supply of advanced semi-conductors for its weapons and military dominance
csours 19 minutes ago [-]
"Why?" is the hardest of the questions.
For any particular person, you can tell a story that satisfies "Why?". But for a large number of people, you have to answer "Why?" for one sub-group at a time.
In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
To answer a different question: It appears that the Israeli government and military wanted to bomb Iran again, and the United States executive branch and military decided to help out. This is an incomplete and unsatisfying answer. Sorry.
Oh wow, I never truly realized it before, but his speech really used to be a lot more coherent across long sentences than it is these days.
zardo 29 minutes ago [-]
To bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ.
pphysch 7 minutes ago [-]
According to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, we are at war because we knew Israel was going to assassinate Iranian leaders and we would be expected to defend them (and our foreign bases) when they go to war, so we might as well go to war right away. 4D chess.
dexzod 12 minutes ago [-]
Greater Israel project
jcgrillo 22 minutes ago [-]
Midterm elections later this year
MengerSponge 25 minutes ago [-]
To occupy media cycles? To start the rapture?
kraftman 28 minutes ago [-]
Distraction
rebolek 21 minutes ago [-]
You're asking dangerous questions, comrade.
tokyobreakfast 12 minutes ago [-]
How much money was set on fire for Ukraine?
Where does that fall in relation on the righteousness rubric?
TSiege 47 minutes ago [-]
Cost is not the first thing I care about in war, but I felt like this is a useful site for tracking the money we're lighting on fire in order to pursue this conflict
Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
keybored 21 minutes ago [-]
That’s good. But it seems that the American anti-war discourse is slanted towards the cost of it. Maybe because the whole political spectrum can relate to “our tax dollars”, while (1) the cost for the military personell might not be a concern for all because it is all-volunteer, and (2) some Americans don’t care what happens to people in other countries.
Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.
4gotunameagain 18 minutes ago [-]
How much more is the US going to spend on Israel ?
Huge swaths of the US populace is impoverished and struggling, health insurance is non existence, the quality of education is in free fall, yet they decide to spend trillions for Israel.
Why ?
bawolff 10 minutes ago [-]
US has tons of interests in the region. This is just as much for america's benefit as it is for Israel's.
jmyeet 12 minutes ago [-]
There are a bunch of videos showing how expensive it is to fire certain weapons eg [1]. Not only are there our direct costs but we're also supplying several allies with munitions and weapon systems and paying for them ourselves.
Also, yes carrier groups exist anyway, but operating them in a combat zone halfway around the world is way more expensive.
Operation Epstein Fury [sic] is a giant white elephant and I think more Americans should know how much this is costing as well as why we're doing it, which is simply to support American imperialism with a lie similar to the IRaq WMD lie and that is that Iran is "weeks away" from nuclear weapons, a lie that's been told and propagated since at least 1992 [2].
President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the expanding military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address [3]. Every bomber, every plane, every missile has an eye-watering cost when you put it int erms of schools, houses or healthcare. The recent ICE budget, for example, could've ended homelessness. Not for the year. Forever.
Israel begged every president since Reagan to invade Iran. They all declined. Until now. And many suspect we're going to run out of anti-missile munitions long before Iran runs out of ballistic missiles.
Just remember, every used munition eneds to be replaced. That's a new contract and new profit opportunity. It's why in so many post-WW2 conflicts you'll find American weapons on both sides.
On the other side, it seems like this is not tracking interceptor costs (presumably due to it being classified), which have certainly been used extensively and are extremely expensive. For that matter i doubt we have a very clear picture of how much ordinance has been used in general.
[To be clear, im not doubting war is very expensive]
(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
Sure the Navy can Airlift in parts etc, but that’s obviously very expensive and less obviously more dangerous.
But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.
The idea that the war isn’t costing money for personnel because those people would be doing something anyway makes no sense. They could be doing something else. In fact, they could be doing something that increases the wealth and wellbeing of the world, rather than destroying things. So from that perspective, the cost is far higher than what is shown here.
Then there’s the loss of innocent lives. It would be unconscionable to put a price tag on the lives of dozens of Iranian girls killed when their school was flattened and to show it on this website, and yet, this is not “free” either.
Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.
Right now Iran is harrasing traffic. Previously the Houthis, generally considered an Iranian proxy, were harrasing traffic. Its all kind of the same war, this is just the end game.
Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.
But you are keeping people on high alert, refueling further away, etc...
Now the message we’ve told the world is: If you don’t want to eventually be at risk of the US attacking you, you better be nuclear armed.
2025 United States strikes on Iranian nuclear sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_strikes_on_...
2026 Iran massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
2026 Iran conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_conflict
I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.
(Civilian casualty ratios in recent conflicts and declared wars)
We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
I suppose pick either, and it was successful.
My personal polymarket says we wont get either. Trump and Israel ruin their reputation. But reputation matters close to 0 in international relations, which is why they don't care.
> We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
Neither of those things is a guaranteed outcome of this. Depending on who you ask, it's not even a likely outcome.
The IRGC remains the most powerful group in Iran. Probably a military junta is a more likely outcome, plus or minus a civil war to establish it.
I also think that nuclear powers mean regional stability. Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 90s and we saw what happened there.
For any particular person, you can tell a story that satisfies "Why?". But for a large number of people, you have to answer "Why?" for one sub-group at a time.
In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
To answer a different question: It appears that the Israeli government and military wanted to bomb Iran again, and the United States executive branch and military decided to help out. This is an incomplete and unsatisfying answer. Sorry.
Where does that fall in relation on the righteousness rubric?
Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.
Huge swaths of the US populace is impoverished and struggling, health insurance is non existence, the quality of education is in free fall, yet they decide to spend trillions for Israel.
Why ?
Also, yes carrier groups exist anyway, but operating them in a combat zone halfway around the world is way more expensive.
Operation Epstein Fury [sic] is a giant white elephant and I think more Americans should know how much this is costing as well as why we're doing it, which is simply to support American imperialism with a lie similar to the IRaq WMD lie and that is that Iran is "weeks away" from nuclear weapons, a lie that's been told and propagated since at least 1992 [2].
President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the expanding military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address [3]. Every bomber, every plane, every missile has an eye-watering cost when you put it int erms of schools, houses or healthcare. The recent ICE budget, for example, could've ended homelessness. Not for the year. Forever.
Israel begged every president since Reagan to invade Iran. They all declined. Until now. And many suspect we're going to run out of anti-missile munitions long before Iran runs out of ballistic missiles.
Just remember, every used munition eneds to be replaced. That's a new contract and new profit opportunity. It's why in so many post-WW2 conflicts you'll find American weapons on both sides.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6mWI8Q6IwA
[2]: https://www.tiktok.com/@therecount/video/7612744750713589023
[3]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...