2026-03-18
8 分钟This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Ricky Mulvey.
And I'm Darian Woods.
Lately on the show, we've been discussing some of the broader economic costs of the US-Israel war with Iran.
And those expenses vary day by day.
Yeah, finding out how much money war costs is a difficult task in the moment.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies first estimated
that the early days of Operation Epic Fury cost roughly $900 million per day.
More recently, The New York Times reported that Pentagon officials estimated the cost to be more than twice that number,
about $1.9 billion per day.
And even these numbers don't tell the whole story.
These estimates are the tip of an iceberg.
Today on the show, we're looking at the costs of operation Epic Fury,
why post-9/11 wars cost trillions of dollars more than early estimates suggested, and the underestimated expenses
that American taxpayers will be paying now and far into the future.
Wars are expensive, and it's difficult to find out just how much one costs in the middle of it.
Mark Gantzian is a retired US Marine Colonel.
He's also done budgeting for the Department of Defense and helped come up with that daily $900 million or
so estimate, but that number is already significantly higher.
The munitions mix appears to have been a little richer than we had first estimated, and the damage