FEATURE ARTICLE

December 2001

Costs for Operation Enduring Freedom: Up to $1B Per Month

by Sandra I. Erwin

Even though the Pentagon has not released any official cost estimates of the ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan, some experts already have speculated on the projected price tag, based on the cost of past operations.

James McAleese, an attorney who represents defense and aerospace corporations, calculated that Operation Enduring Freedom, in addition to new responsibilities for homeland defense since September 11, could require an annual increase of $60 billion to the Pentagon’s budget during the next two to three years. That number potentially could go up to $100 billion, said McAleese.

He explained the figures are derived from the cost of previous military campaigns.

Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield, which lasted about seven months, cost the U.S. government $7.3 billion. Only 8 percent of the weapons were precision-guided bombs. But the cost of the PGMs represented 84 percent of the total cost of the munitions used.

McAleese cites some examples of sortie costs from the Gulf War:

• F-117 Air Force stealth fighter: $15,700 per typical sortie.
• F/A-18 Navy strike aircraft: $17,200 per typical sortie.
• 210,004 unguided bombs cost $432 million.
• 9,342 guided bombs cost of $298.2 million.
• 332 cruise missiles cost of $913.8 million.

Operation Allied Force (over Kosovo), which lasted 78 days, cost between $2 billion and $3 billion, said McAleese.

Last month, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C., said that the U.S. military campaign against Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan cost some $400 million to $800 million in its first 25 days (October 7-31).

If operations continue at roughly the same tempo and with roughly the same forces, the Department of Defense is likely to incur additional costs of some $500 million to $1 billion a month for the duration of the operation, said CSBA’s Steve Kosiak.

“Estimating the costs of military operations is an inherently difficult and uncertain task,” he said. “It is made even more difficult in this case, because the operation is ongoing and because the Defense Department has so far provided fewer details concerning this campaign than it did during some past military operations (such as the 1991 Gulf War and the 1999 war in Kosovo).”

In addition, said Kosiak, the U.S. military has incurred other costs related to Operation Noble Eagle, which focuses on homeland defense. That includes the activation of 41,000 reserve personnel since the terrorist attacks of September 11. A “ballpark” estimate, he said, “might be in the range of one hundred to several hundred million dollars a month.”

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