Murphy’s Law: Too Cheap To Avoid
May 19, 2011: Last month, the U.S. announced that the war effort in Libya had cost about $600 million for the first 17 days. That was about $35 million a day. A month later, the total U.S. cost has gone to about $750 million, or $16 million a day so far. This was what was expected, for daily costs to eventually settle down to $10-20 million a day. The U.S. has withdrawn most of its combat aircraft, but is still providing electronic warfare (and monitoring) aircraft, aerial tankers and two Predator UAVs. There are also several warships offshore and an undisclosed number of special operations troops inside Libya. The United States has told the European and Arab countries to take care of this one, as it is in their back yards and is more their problem.
The U.S. is already paying for Iraq and Afghanistan, and does not feel required to take on primary responsibility for Libya as well. But $20 million a day is still a lot of money. How does this compare with the daily cost for other American wars? All daily war costs shown below are in current dollars (adjusted for inflation);