$200 Million in Missiles Gone in a Day

Fifty Patriot interceptor missiles in a single day. At four to five million dollars apiece, that’s somewhere between $200 million and $250 million of your money turned into smoke and noise over the desert in 24 hours. And that’s just one missile type on one day.

The whole Iran war, which Trump restarted by unilaterally tearing up the ceasefire and bombing civilian infrastructure, has already burned through more than $11 billion in its first six days. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says we fired 168 Tomahawk cruise missiles in the first 100 hours alone. Tomahawks cost $3.6 million each and are built by RTX, formerly Raytheon. Here’s the kicker: in the past five years, the entire U.S. military purchased only 322 of them. We just blew through more than half that stockpile in less than a week.

U.S. Army 94AAMDC by Maj. Nicholas Chopp (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Over 1,500 Patriot interceptors have been used since February. Do the math on that. Six to seven and a half billion dollars in Patriots alone. Senator Mark Kelly, a man who actually served in a war, said it plainly: “The math on this doesn’t work.” Iran fires cheap drones. We fire million-dollar missiles to swat them down. Every intercept is a payday for the arms manufacturers and a withdrawal from your account.

Ask yourself who benefits. Trump met with executives from seven arms contractors as the Pentagon scrambled to restock. The same Pentagon is now preparing to ask Congress for up to $50 billion more. Fifty billion. And Karoline Leavitt stood at the podium and told you the military has “more than enough munitions, ammo and weapons stockpiles.” If that were true, why is the Pentagon panicking about resupply? Why did a source tell the Financial Times that “the navy will be feeling this expenditure for several years”? Why did one lawmaker say, “It’s a lot. And it will take years to replace”?

They think you can’t hold two numbers in your head at the same time. The White House says we have plenty. The Pentagon says we need $50 billion. Both things cannot be true. But they don’t need both to be true. They just need you not to notice the contradiction.

Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile, 11 American soldiers are dead and over 150 wounded. The UN says more than 3,400 Iranian civilians have been killed between February and June. A U.S. strike on Qeshm island wiped out a husband, wife, and their two-year-old son with a 2,000-pound bomb. No military casualties near the site. Just a crater where a family used to live. Oil is above $100 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is blocked. Gas prices are climbing and Trump’s own voters are turning against this thing.

Mitch McConnell, never one to pass up a chance to spend your money on weapons, urged colleagues to approve the $50 billion because “weakness invites challenge.” Lisa Murkowski, to her credit, told the White House not to expect a blank check. Democrats are calling the war illegal because Trump never went to Congress. They’re right on the law, even if half of them would vote for the funding anyway once the pressure hits.

Iran’s IRGC commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi told PBS they can stretch this out until 2029. He said it out loud. The other side is telling you their strategy, and it’s to bleed us dry. And we’re helping them do it, one $4 million missile at a time.

Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

The people selling the missiles get rich. The people firing them get killed or come home broken. The people paying for them get nothing but a higher gas bill and a president who claims “total control” of a strait that remains completely blocked.

Funny how that works.