The Most Expensive War in History: Yemen!
By Mohammad Sleem
Beirut – In 2018, the Foreign Policy magazine published a report on the Saudi regime’s expenses in its war on Yemen. The report, detailing the expenses of the war’s third year, included staggering numbers paid by the Saudis daily for the military equipment manufactured by western countries, mainly the USA.
The FP report merely mentions the most prominent and notable expenditures without delving into details. By doing simple math, one can easily calculate the total amount of money spent after the seven years of war on Yemen.
The most significant financial losses were distributed as follows according to the report:
The cost of renting two warships and their 12 frigates used in the Saudi-led siege on Yemen is $300 million per day. The barge carrying 6000 soldiers, dozens of planes, missiles, and long-range artillery costs $54 billion in 6 months, subsequently $756 billion over the seven years.
The hourly cost of renting a satellite is $1 million, meaning that the daily cost of the two satellites used on the aggression on Yemen is $48 million, and therefore $8,640 billion dollars for a half year, and $120,960 billion in seven years of war.
The cost of analyzing, displaying and extracting information and data from military satellite images is $10 million per day or $1.8 billion over six months. The equivalent of $25.2 billion over the course of seven years.
The cost of renting the AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] detection aircraft is estimated at $250,000 per hour, or $6 million per day, equivalent to $1,80 billion within six months, and $15.12 billion and $120 million during the seven years of failure in Yemeni airspace.
Speaking of the raids, 140 thousand missiles of different sizes varying between small, medium, and large, where the value of one missile ranged between $150 and $500,000 have been dropped. Therefore, the total estimated number of raids until the year 2019, according to the number mentioned by FP magazine, amounts to $46 billion. However, according to the number announced by the spokesman of the Yemeni armed forces, which amounted to 272000 raids by the end of 2021, those raids cost more than $89,332 billion during the seven years.
The cost of air supplies, jet fuel, maintenance, and spare parts for each aircraft in a single raid was estimated at $150,000 – when multiplied by the total number of raids, we end up with $9.71 billion.
Added to the aforementioned are the arms deal with the United States which is worth $150 billion and the $36 billion arms exports from France, bringing the total of what was mentioned only to an estimated $1,179,920 trillion.
Not to mention, the 300 tanks and armored vehicles that Saudi Arabia lost during its aggression, in addition to the operating expenses, salaries, and the value of oil cuts granted by Saudi Arabia to the US, Europe, Sudan, Morocco, and Pakistan amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. The losses of the Yemeni armed forces’ deterrence operations, the production stoppage in Aramco, the decline in the market value, and the inflation of foreign capital as a result of the war, also add to the total costs.
No space is enough to mention these enormous figures, as the Saudi regime may have been witnessing the worst financial drain in its history. This has direct consequences on the citizens of the Kingdom, and it poses an important question. What are the goals that has been achieved by the aggression on Yemen till now?!
