Mmmm, long-tail contracts….
«Federal lawmakers know they cannot count on executive branch officials for a straight answer about this war’s cost. Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the House Budget Committee on April 15, “I don’t have a ballpark for you.” It is incredible for him to claim that he has no general sense of the Iran war’s cost so far. Many people, including in the government, have been counting.
The Pentagon told Congress that the first six days of the war cost more than $11.3 billion. The Center for Strategic and International Studies calculated that munitions consumed 84 cents of every dollar spent on the Iran conflict in the opening 100 hours, as the U.S. military burned through Tomahawk, Patriot and THAAD inventories. With over 50,000 U.S. troops deployed in the region and about 13,000 strikes against Iran, the American Enterprise Institute estimated the cost at between $25 billion and $35 billion.
And that’s before the long-tail contracts that follow every war. Those costs can be enormous, and we need to anticipate them.»