According to two people directly familiar with the matter, US intelligence officials now estimate that the total military cost of the Iran war for the Pentagon could exceed $100 billion. The Trump administration has not disclosed its cost estimates publicly, but internal documents reveal figures far higher than officially stated. At the end of May, officials were tracking the total cost of Operation Epic Fury in the $50 to $100 billion range, aligning with confidential congressional estimates putting costs to date at around $80 billion. In June, the White House made a request for $88 billion to cover some costs, but even that is an undercount.
Aircraft losses and the dilemma over replacement
Part of the reason a final cost is unavailable is that the Pentagon is still deciding whether to replace all aircraft destroyed or damaged beyond repair. If certain aircraft are not replaced, defense officials have told lawmakers they will not request money for them, thus excluding those costs from the war total. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, in a May 20 report based solely on public reporting, documented the loss of at least 17 manned aircraft and 25 drones since the conflict began. Among them was an MQ-4C Triton, a Navy surveillance aircraft costing over $600 million per airframe. The increasing loss of drones, which are not cheap to replace, adds a critical cost.
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Base repairs and the risk of strategic closures
The cost of repairing US bases in the region, some of which sustained heavy damage from Iranian retaliatory missiles and one-way attack drones, will also be high. Defense officials have told lawmakers behind closed doors they have not accounted for repair costs, and may never do so, if the US ultimately decides to shutter those bases because they are too vulnerable to Iranian attacks. Iran has repeatedly hit key Middle Eastern bases, including the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet at Naval Support Activity, Bahrain, which the Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged. The only public cost figure came from then acting Pentagon comptroller Jay Hurst, who testified in May that costs had reached roughly $29 billion, mainly for munitions and fuel for the two aircraft carriers.
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Operation Gold Eagle for cybersecurity and AI
In parallel, the Trump administration on Tuesday launched a clearinghouse called "Gold Eagle," run by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which will use non-public AI models to identify and patch software vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them. This is the first major implementation of Trump's June 2 executive order aimed at creating a framework to oversee advanced AI threats. However, a bigger test lies ahead: the order also requires a classified benchmarking process to assess AI model capabilities before release and whether restrictions apply. So far, the administration has regulated the industry by requiring companies like Anthropic to throttle the capabilities of their most powerful models, such as Mythos, for public use. Within six to 12 months, experts believe China will catch up in the AI race, releasing equally powerful models not answerable to the US government. It remains unclear how the administration intends to stop bad actors from using those models to hack sensitive systems. For more on AI security, read about OpenAI's super-hacker LLM and Thinking Machines' Inkling. For broader context, see Wikipedia on Iran-US relations.
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Source: https://www.wired.com/story/pentagons-bill-for-iran-war-exceed-100-billion
