In modern conflicts, the cost of operating an advanced air force can easily exceed the hundreds of millions daily, especially when they intervene clatest generation acesin-flight refueling and precision guided munition. Added to this is that some key systems, as strategic radars or early warning aircraft, require years to manufacture and they have no substitutes immediate. In this context, there are wars in which attrition is not measured only in territory, but in how much time can be held that rhythm before the accounts stop adding up.
In Iran, for example, they had been shot.
A show of force. The United States’ Operation Epic Fury on Iran began with the idea of a rapid and controlled campaign, but very soon it revealed his true face after episodes such as the last downing of the F-15E and the complex rescue operation that has followed him, where the United States has had to deploy multiple media and take additional losses even destroying their own equipment to avoid capture.
These types of incidents have shown from the beginning that the conflict was far from being surgical and that the level of operational risk was much older than expected. As the days progressed, the narrative of technological superiority began to take hold.face reality of a saturated, chaotic and increasingly expensive environment to sustain.
Military wear. The accumulated figures show a significant wear on key platforms, from fighters like the F-15E or the A-10 to critical assets such as early warning aircraft and tankers, in addition to dozens of downed drones. Especially worrying for Americans has been the impact in support systems such as advanced radars or command infrastructures, the loss of which not only has a high economic cost, but also weakens operational capacity future in other strategic scenarios.
Plus: added to this are errors such as friendly fire episodes and the vulnerability of apparently secure bases, which reinforces the idea that the campaign not only consumes resources, but also erodes capabilities that are difficult to replace.
The number that explains everything. However, the real turning point is not only on the battlefield, but in the accounts: the war has reached a spending rate close to the 1 billion dollars a day only in air operations, a nonsense that shoots the total cost above of the 280,000 million in just 40 days.
Add to this tens of billions in ammunition, damage to bases, loss of aircraft and a devastating impact in energy infrastructure key to the Gulf, the same ones that have paralyzed part of global supply and raised the bill even more. The result is an extraordinarily expensive and useless war, possibly the most economically, because in a few weeks a level of expenditure and destruction has been reached that in other conflicts took years, and that is unprecedented. Not only that. A war that, despite all this deployment, has not achieved any of your strategic objectivesbecoming an extreme example of imbalance between investment and results.
Overflowing the military field. The impact is not limited to the military: attacks on refineriesgas plants, export terminals and industrial centers have turned the conflict into a regional economic crisis with global effectsfrom energy to inflation.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has amplified the damageaffecting a substantial part of the world’s oil and gas supply, while sectors such as aluminum, logistics and transportation have suffered multi-million dollar losses. In parallel, the need to repair critical infrastructure and replace scarce equipment adds additional pressure that extends the cost far beyond the conflict itself.
The ceasefire: more economics than strategy. In this context, the ultimatum issued by Trump ensuring that he was going to end an entire civilization and his rear reverse A few hours before the deadline, they take on a new meaning: more than a purely strategic decision, the ceasefire seems to be understood as a response to a dynamic unbearable and unsustainable.
International pressure, nervousness in the markets and fear of a total escalation coincided with a reality that is difficult to ignore: each additional day of war multiplied an already overflowing cost without bringing victory closer. Thus, the last minute break Not only has it avoided a further escalation, but it has exposed the logic that has ended up prevailing: in this war, the problem was not how to win, but how much more could one continue paying for not doing so.
Image | The White House Egyosint
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