Intel Officials Predict Pentagon Bill for Iran War Will Exceed $100 Billion

President Donald Trump it also sparked the Iran conflict and days of missile strikes, and US law enforcement officials are now estimating all military expenses because the Pentagon could exceed $100 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Officials estimate the total cost of Operation Epic Fury to be between $50 billion and $100 billion by the end of May, according to classified Congressional documents that put the cost at around $80 billion.

The Trump administration has not yet announced the cost of the Iran war. In June the White House requested $88 billion in additional military spending, but even that is low, people say.

One of the reasons the final cost isn’t available is that the Pentagon is still deciding whether to replace all the planes that were destroyed or damaged beyond repair during the conflict, the people said.

If the Pentagon decides not to replace some of the planes, defense officials have told lawmakers, they won’t be able to ask for money for it — and therefore won’t spend the entire military budget, the people said.

After giving details of the report, the head of the War Department said The Inner Loop: “Right now there is nothing more to say.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a report on May 20 was made using publicly available reports that the US has lost at least 17 manned aircraft and 25 drones since the start of the conflict.

The CRS report also shows that the US has lost a large number of drones, which are not cheap to replace. Among the 25 drones lost was the MQ-4C Triton, the Navy’s top-of-the-line surveillance aircraft. which costs more than $600 million on the airframe.

The cost of repairing US bases in the region, some of which suffered heavy damage from Iran’s retaliatory missile and one-way attack drones in response to US strikes, has also risen.

Defense officials have told lawmakers not to count the cost of repairs — and likely won’t — if the U.S. decides to close the bases because of the risk of an Iranian attack, officials say.

Iran has managed to repeatedly hit several bases in the Middle East in retaliation, including headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Naval Support Activity, Bahrain, which the Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged.

The only price that has been made public by a senior defense official is from Pentagon chief Jay Hurst, who testified in May that the cost of the war was there. it rose to $29 billion.

On Tuesday, at a meeting to be appointed as administrator, Hurst refused to give an updated figure, but said that $29 billion was mainly for military equipment and the cost of fuel related to having two US aircraft carriers operating around the Middle East.

The mission “Gold Eagle” has arrived

The Trump administration on Tuesday launched a new intelligence agency that will try to identify and identify any threats to the software before malicious actors steal them. the most powerful types of AI.

A senior executive said The Inner Loop The clearing house, called “Gold Eagle,” will be managed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which will use AI models that are not publicly available, to identify vulnerabilities.

It’s the first big sign to set up Trump’s order on June 2 which aims to create a framework for managing the rapidly growing threat of advanced AI models.