this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024

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208

Israel's defence against Iran attack overnight 'likely cost over $1bn' (www.middleeasteye.net)

submitted 7 months ago by Linkerbaan@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

88 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It cost Israel more than $1bn to activate its defence systems that intercepted Iran's massive drone and missile attack overnight, according to a former financial adviser to Israel's military.

"The defence tonight was on the order of 4-5bn shekels [$1-1.3bn] per night," estimated Brigadier General Reem Aminoach in an interview with Ynet news.

"If we're talking about ballistic missiles that need to be brought down with an Arrow system, cruise missiles that need to be brought down with other missiles, and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], which we actually bring down mainly with fighter jets," he said.

"Then add up the costs - $3.5m for an Arrow missile, $1m for a David's Sling, such and such costs for jets. An order of magnitude of 4-5bn shekels."

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[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 98 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The cost for one night of defence seen as significantly higher than the price Iran paid to mount its attack

That looks like it's exactly the point. Israel hitting the Iranian embassy wasn't extreme enough for Iran to seriously escalate, yet you can't just leave such a thing unanswered or they'll do it again and again, you also don't want to draw (additional) ire to yourself, meaning you don't want to have any casualties, at least not indiscriminate ones, at the most you want to give people a scare. So you shoot a couple of volleys you know Israel can intercept, maximising not for anything getting through but interception costing them a pretty penny. Now, the next time the IDF considers such a strike some politician somewhere is going to say "we don't have a billion dollars to spare right now for that BS, cut it out".

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 55 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Note that a significant amount of the interceptor missiles and planes used were American and a small part British, so israel is not footing this bill by itself.

[–] lettruthout@lemmy.world 45 points 7 months ago (39 children)

This is just one reason why the US doesn't have public health care.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 77 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The main reason isn’t cost, it’s republicans.

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 45 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I keep telling people we already spend more than other places but they don’t get it. Waiting til you’re in the ER with a preventable issue is always going to be the least cost effective

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And that’s the reason so many low-income counties are losing their hospitals.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No, that’s because private equity bought them up and drained them. Just like they do with other companies. It’s not the sole reason but it is a reason.

https://lowninstitute.org/the-rising-danger-of-private-equity-in-healthcare/amp/

Hospitals should he government owned, non-profit, etc. they stocks not be private equity owneds.

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[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 22 points 7 months ago (3 children)

That's BS the US is already spending as many federal tax payer dollars per capita on healthcare as the UK is spending on the NHS. That's not to say that the funding of the NHS is stellar but the service level is also in no way abysmal. Long story short: US taxpayers are not even close to getting their money's worth because most of it is funnelled to private profits, not actual healthcare. Military has nothing to do with it the US could double the medical budget and it wouldn't make a dent in the military budget.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 months ago

The issue has and always will be that Medicare for all takes money away from the billionaire class.

Privatization is the reason for “small government”

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[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The other reason being that grifters in the healthcare business gonna grift.

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 9 points 7 months ago

Enjoy your freedom potholes.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago

This and the almost $1trillion military budget. "You want money to bomb other nations? Absolutely, here, unlimited supply of money. Healthcare and education for the people who pay for the military? Nah fuck them, how are we gonna pay for it?"

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[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 31 points 7 months ago (21 children)

How much would it cost NOT to shoot them down?

[–] supermair@lemmy.ca 17 points 7 months ago (6 children)

A better way to put it would be: how much would it have saved to not have to shoot them down to begin with?

Israel is desperate to keep wars going to justify their annexing of Gaza and West Bank and leech off the US.

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

How much would it cost NOT to shoot them down?

That's a legit point, though I think that there's also a very real point that we need more-cost-effective counters to shoot down low-end weapons.

We've focused on increasingly-high-end systems for a long time in the air defense world. If you're going to have everyone running around with explosive-bearing quadcopters and $20k craft that can precisely deliver a munitions payload 1,600 miles like the Shahed-136, we're going to need to have cost-effective counters.

Not to mention the scale-up question. Let's say China started mass-producing weaponized DJI drones tomorrow, which I expect that they probably could without too much trouble. Maybe we can hypothetically develop a cost-effective counter, but how long is it going to take us to get that up to scale? And what are the implications if we can't?

Supposing China has a cheap aerial delivery vehicle that releases weaponized quadcopters over Taiwan, lets them land and go to sleep, waking up only periodically at specific times for instructions. The vehicle is cheap enough to be attritable, and the quadcopters obviously are. Maybe you could even use subs to deliver them. Is there anything we can do to counter that, or does Taiwan just face an overwhelming deluge of precision-guided anti-personnel/anti-vehicle weapons that China can activate at any point?

We have good counters to a lot of high-end weapons. I'm not sure that we have good counters to massed low-end weapons. And I've read enough articles from folks commenting on the military situation concerned about it that I kind of suspect that I'm not just missing something obvious.

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[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It didn't cost Israel anything. The U.S. and UK covered the cost.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't believe that that's true. We used some of our weapons. And we do provide some military aid. But we don't pay Israel's military budget, and assuming that Iron Dome was a major factor here, that's an Israeli system.

[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

From 2011 to 2021, the United States contributed a total of US$1.6 billion to the Iron Dome defense system,[11] with another US$1 billion approved by the US Congress in 2022. Source

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So about 250 million a year. This one attack cost four times as much.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget the billions more we give them every single year https://www.axios.com/2023/11/04/us-israel-aid-military-funding-chart

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[–] BluesF@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I still can't believe that Israel's actual currency is called the "shekel", it really sounds like something a sci fi author would make up.

[–] zenParsnip@sh.itjust.works 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

It's a reference to antiquity. A shekel was a unit of weight and later a unit of currency in the ancient Near East.

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[–] 3volver@lemmy.world 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It's okay, they will just print more money, don't worry.

[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

More likely the US will just gift them more

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