Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,
Combat operations against Iran have cost the U.S. military about $25 billion in two months, a top Pentagon accounting official told House Armed Services Committee members on April 29.
The Wednesday hearing marked the first time Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine have testified publicly to Congress since U.S. and Israeli forces commenced attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged fire for about five and a half weeks before the parties entered into a ceasefire agreement on April 8.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member on the committee, asked the Pentagon to account for the costs of U.S. munitions expended as well as for equipment destroyed in the course of the fighting.
Jules Hurst, the acting War Department comptroller, estimated those costs at about $25 billion.
Hurst said munitions accounted for most of it, but said he also factored in operations and maintenance and equipment replacement costs. Hurst joined Hegseth and Caine at the hearing, as Congress weighs military funding requests for fiscal year 2027.
The Trump administration has been working on submitting a supplemental funding request to Congress to cover the war’s costs, but has yet to finalize it or settle on an exact figure.
“We will formulate a supplemental through the White House that will come to Congress once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict,” Hurst said.
The Pentagon is already seeking a $1.5 trillion military and defense spending budget for fiscal year 2027. The request amounts to a 42 percent increase over fiscal year 2026 military spending, which totaled approximately $1.03 trillion.
Among other items, the Trump administration’s 2027 military budget request seeks $52.9 billion to boost procurement for 12 weapons systems that the Pentagon has classified as critical munitions.
In March, President Donald Trump announced he had met with the CEOs of BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon parent RTX Corp., Boeing, Honeywell, and L3Harris Technologies to discuss boosting their munitions production levels. Weapons produced by the companies—including the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense systems and offensive weapons like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile—have featured heavily in the Iran war.
Beyond the immediate material costs to replace weapons and equipment, the Iran war has also disrupted global oil and gas flows out of the Middle East, leading to rising prices for consumers.