How much does it cost the government to send one person to war?

Question

I need to find out for my government class. Please help out a lil bit, i couldnt find it anywhere! thanks, i appreciate it!

Answer 1

It costs a lot less than surrendering and letting terrorists kill us.
Your government class should worry about freedom, IF they are allowed to do that anymore.

Answer 2

Using standing forces already stationed at a military installation you have to calculate this cost based upon transportation and extra equipment he may need. Assuming your sending infantry and combat support the costs will be almost nothing. Remember, these men are already being supported and paid to act and be trained as soldiers at a U.S. fort like Ft. Lewis, Ft. Benning, etc. Sending them into war doesn't increase the cost of their operations except for additional needs, which are few. The one person thing is misleading since one person is never sent to war. Units of soldiers are sent to war and we have to assume that the unit sent is infantry or combat related. These units operate on budgets like any other institution and you would only be increasing that budget by the cost of new items of use, like air transportation. I would not include ground transportation since these men do not stay in one place even when training in the U.S. The highly inflated costs you see provided by politicians are, for the most part, fraudulent and used to push political their "agenda of the day." The increases in pay such as foreign duty pay or hazardous duty pay should also be included if appropriate. Other than the costs mentioned the rest is purely speculative.

Answer 3

This is very hard to estimate and depends on what kind of war is being fought. But lets try:

The Iraq war has cost us about $330 billion so far.
1,048,884 soldiers had been sent to Iraq by Jan 31, 2005 according to the Pentagon.

Assuming that this number has remained relatively steady, it has cost our government $314,620 per soldier for the war in Iraq. So over 3 years it costs over $100,000 per soldier deployed to Iraq. But most of these soldiers are not actually in Iraq. Only about 200,000 are actually in Iraq at any given time. So that brings up the cost to 1mil soldiers / 200,000 soldiers / $ = $500,000 per soldier in Iraq. Since the war has been going on for 3 years, we can take $500,000/soldier / 3 years = $166,000 per soldier per year.
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Note: Oops, after I posted this I realized I made a mathematical
error by dividing out 3 years two times. That suggests $500,000/soldier/year. That is higher than I would expect, so I doubt it is correct.

Calculating the actual cost per soldier would be a very difficult task, and fairly meaningless. It would be more useful to calculate something like how much does it cost to keep the average Marine on the ground per day, or how much does it cost to keep 1 F16 in service for a year.

But in the end, war is not cheap, either in money or lives.
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This is what is called a back of the envelope calculation. It is very rough, but it gives an idea of how much it costs.
$166,000 per soldier per year is a lot of money.

There are also hidden costs. Each of those soldiers off at war cannot contribute to the economy here at home. This translates to lost GDP. Another hidden cost is how much the future medical costs of the soldiers will be. 50 years from now we will still have to pay for Iraq vets health care.

Answer 4

It doesn't cost the government anything. It costs the US taxpayers around 4500 dollars and 98 cents to send one of our soldiers to any decent sized war lasting 3-5 months

Answer 5

Interesting Question... framed by a liberal teacher ?

First, are we calculating an average, or a mean ? Privates cost less than Colonels !

Since the US has a STANDING military, DO we need to include the basic pay that this "AVERAGE" soldier is paid in peace OR war ?

Do we calculate this "average" cost to include the years of training from basic to deployment to war?

Transport to the Theater of War ? Figure a charter flight from US to the location in question.

Combat Area Pay: Another of many Hazardous Duty Pays (flight pay, dive pay, swimmer pay, flight deck pay) added to basic pay.

I'd SUGGEST contacting your Elected Representative... the DOD, OR the OMB !

Answer 6

If it prevents one person from flying one plane into one building then it is worth it

Answer 7

14 Barrels of Oil

But think how many more that solider is making for the country!

Answer 8

it cost more than Medicare for a thousand people.

Answer 9

$10,000 Dollars.