When American forces launched their ‘Operation Epic Fury’ against Iran at the end of February, few outside the Pentagon fully understood the price tag that would follow. Now, with a ceasefire holding for two weeks and more, the numbers are emerging. And they make for deeply uncomfortable reading if you were a defence planner in Washington, or if you are someone who worries about how wars erode the money that could be used elsewhere.
First, let’s look at the numbers, and then we see what they could mean.
What’s been fired, what remains
The US burned through approximately 1,100 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) missiles during the conflict, at roughly $1.1 million apiece, according to internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials as per a report by the New York Times.
It’s a long-range stealth cruise missile with a range exceeding 600 miles or over 960 km, specifically designed to penetrate hardened targets beyond the reach of enemy air defences.
According to internal Pentagon estimates, only around 1,500 remain.
The numbers elsewhere are equally sobering.
More than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired in the campaign — roughly 10 times the number the United States currently procures in a single year.
Each Tomahawk costs approximately $3.6 million.
A study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates the remaining Tomahawk stockpile at around 3,000 missiles, a figure that military planners consider insufficient for a major conflict in the Western Pacific.
“While sufficient munitions exist to wage this war,” the CSIS study concluded, “the high expenditure of Tomahawks and other missiles in Operation Epic Fury creates risks for the United States in other theatres — particularly the Western Pacific.” That means the area across the Pacific Ocean from the western coast of the US, with China, Japan, the Koreas and Russia across the vast waters.
The strain on air defence capabilities may be the most alarming figure of all, as per NYT.
The Pentagon deployed more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles — each costing over $4 million — to counter Iran’s drone and rocket barrages.
To put that in context, the US produced roughly 600 Patriot interceptors across the entirety of 2025.
More than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles were also expended, leaving inventories at levels described internally as “worrisomely low” by sources to the NYT.
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at CSIS, was quoted as saying: “The United States has many munitions with adequate inventories, but some critical ground-attack and missile-defence munitions were short before the war and are even shorter now.”
What it means in dollar terms, and beyond Iran
The overall financial cost of the conflict, which ran for 38 days before the ceasefire took effect, is estimated by two independent groups at between $28 billion and $35 billion — approaching $1 billion per day. In the first 48 hours of fighting alone, defence officials told members of Congress, the military consumed $5.6 billion worth of munitions.
The consequences extend far beyond the Middle East.
To sustain operations against Iran, the Pentagon drew down weapons and personnel from commands in both Europe and Asia.
In Europe, the depletion of surveillance and attack drones has been described internally as a serious problem, with domino effects along Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank against Russia.
The situation in Asia is perhaps more alarming still. For the first time, interceptor missiles from the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system stationed in South Korea — deployed specifically to counter North Korean threats — have been redirected to the Middle East. Two Marine Expeditionary Units, totalling approximately 4,400 personnel, were also redeployed from the Pacific.
Yet, even those figures may significantly understate the true financial burden. Writing for Harvard Kennedy School, economist Linda Bilmes, who co-authored a landmark study that put the total cost of the 2003 Iraq War at $3 trillion, argues the conflict is costing approximately $2 billion a day in short-term upfront costs alone, which she describes as “the tip of the iceberg”.
Those immediate expenses cover munitions, the maintenance of two or three carrier strike groups, combat pay and extended deployment pay for tens of thousands of service members, and the cost of unexpected losses such as fighter jets destroyed by friendly fire or the Iranians.
“I am certain we will spend one trillion dollars for the Iran war,” she has said, noting that veteran disability and medical care costs have not yet been factored into any current estimate. Those costs are historically about 40% of the total war expenditure. Before the conflict even began, she observed, the US already owed $7.3 trillion in disability benefits to veterans of previous wars still living today.
Researchers at Brown University’s landmark ‘Costs of War’ project are tracking the consumer burden of the conflict state by state within America, with particular attention to fuel prices.
The national average petrol (or gasoline, as they call it in America) cost jumped nearly 27 cents in a single week as the Iran conflict threatened the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 per cent of the world’s daily oil supply passes. That was the the fastest such weekly increase recorded since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has separately submitted a request to Congress for a $200 billion supplemental appropriations package, while President Trump has publicly signalled his expectation that Arab allies should help share the financial load. That proposition from the US President has so far received a cool response from the region’s governments and monarchies.
‘Reconstituting could take years’
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said, “At current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years.”
That process cannot begin without the US Congressional approval of additional funding, which the Pentagon is still awaiting.
In January, the administration announced seven-year agreements with major defence contractors, including Lockheed Martin, to quadruple production of precision-guided munitions and THAAD interceptors. Officials told NYT no expanded production has actually commenced, because the funding has not been secured.
But the White House has pushed back saying it’s all fake news. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that “the entire premise” of reporting on munitions shortfalls was “false”, insisting the United States military remained “fully loaded with more than enough weapons and munitions, in stockpiles here at home and all around the globe”.
The Pentagon has declined to provide specific figures on munitions usage, citing operational security.
What it means in food stamps, for instance
The estimated daily expenditure of $1 billion a day on the Iran war has been compared by analysts with US domestic programmes.
Consider America’s food stamps programme, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which currently costs American taxpayers around $110 billion a year, feeding some 42 million people. That works out to roughly $300 million a day. That means a single day of the Iran war consumed more than three days’ worth of nutrition support for tens of millions of the country’s poorest citizens.
