The Pentagon may be forced to request emergency funding to
support its military actions in Libyan’s no-fly zone if the operation continues
indefinitely, a leading US strategist said Tuesday.
The bill for the first week of air strikes is estimated to
have cost the US taxpayer $600,000, as a US-led coalition battles to disrupt
Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s attacks on rebel forces.
“At this point it is entirely likely the costs [in Libya]
will top a billion dollars in total, including the opening phase,” Todd
Harrison, senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), told Arabian Business
The mission has focused on key cities where the majority of
attacks on rebels are taking place, comprising around 230,000 sq m or around a
third of Libya.
Gulf states including the UAE and Qatar have joined with
France and the UK to supply troops and arsenal to Operation Odyssey Dawn, but
the bulk of the mission has been financed by the US, Harrison said.
“If we are able to
turn more and more over to our allies to the point that they are flying 80 to
90 percent of the sorties then the cost to us ongoing will be pretty minimal,”
he said.
“But if this does drag on and we are still flying half the
sorties, the costs will start to build up. The administration could very well
come back at that point and ask for supplemental appropriation to help offset
the cost of this.”
Costs have already begun to mount. US forces have launched
at least 191 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a cost of $268.2m, Pentagon data
shows.
B-2 Spirit stealth aircraft have dropped at least 45 bombs, at
a cost of around $40,000 each, while F-15 and F-16 attack aircraft run up a tab
of around $10,000 an hour while in the air.
Added to this are the operational costs for around eleven US
warships and subs deployed off the Libyan coast, and the $60m lost when an US F-15E
aircraft crashed on Libyan soil in the first days of the operation.
The bill, however, pales in comparison to the $2bn weekly
cost of US operations in Afghanistan, where the country has a significant number
of troops on the ground. The US will be reluctant to take a similar approach in
Libya, Harrison said.
“Having a large presence of ground troops, particularly in
an area where it is difficult to supply them, that is what drives the cost and
that is what is driving the cost in Afghanistan,” he said.
“The decision not to put boots on the ground is driven by
politics here and policy considerations. That may be one of the lessons we have
learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan that a large presence of ground troops is
going to raise the cost and therefore the budget… in the long run.”
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