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The cost of a soldier deployed in Afghanistan
U.S. Soldiers from Blackfoot Company of the Army's 1st Battalion 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment in Matakhan, Afghanistan
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
JEREMY HOBSON: Ok, it's quiz time here on the Marketplace Morning Report. And our quizmaster Stephan Richter of TheGlobalist.com joins us now from Washington. Good morning, Stephan.
STEPHAN RICHTER: Good morning Jeremy. Are you ready for today's quiz?
HOBSON: I am ready.
RICHTER: This one is in the context of all the budget debates and what costs money in the United States and for U.S. taxpayers. So my question for you today is this: How much does it cost per year to support one U.S. service member deployed in Afghanistan? Is it A) $67,000 a year; B) $132,000 a year; C) a staggering $685,000 per year; or D) an unbelievable $1.2 million a year?
HOBSON: Well, I am going to guess it is on the higher end of things. But I will just go with a staggering $600,000-some a year, not the unbelievable $1.2 million.
Buzz
RICHTER: Not quite. This number would be right for the war in Iraq, according to numbers from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. $685,000, that's by the way, over 10 times more than the cost of a soldier deployed in World War II. So these wars are getting more expensive all the time.
HOBSON: All right, so I'll guess the $1.2 million.
Ding, ding, ding!
RICHTER: $1.2 million per year. Of course, the least of that is wages or salary for the soldiers themselves. Most of it is due to the sheer lack of infrastructure in Afghanistan; its geographical position as a landlock nation. And the biggest single item in this? Fuel costs.
HOBSON: Wow.
RICHTER: Per troop deployed: $200,000 to $350,000 a year just in fuel costs. With all this heavy stuff that's coming in now, that number's probably going to go up as the oil prices are going up.
HOBSON: All right, Stephan Richter, editor-in-chief at The Globalist. You can find out more about the world at theglobalist.com. Thanks again Stefan.
RICHTER: Good to be with you today.
UPDATE: The source for these figures are detailed on page 17 of the full PDF report.
I'm an editor at The Globalist, and I worked closely with Stephan Richter on researching this quiz.
The data were provided by Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. In addition to appearing in Mr. Harrison's analysis of the FY 2011 Defense Budget, they are also contained in his report titled "The New Guns Versus Butter Debate," which is posted on the CSBA website. See http://www.csbaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/2010.05.24-The-New-..., p. 9.
Thanks for your interest!
The figures of 1.2 mil for soldiers in Afghanistan are in the PDF doc (link below) on pg 17, just below figure 4. (http://www.csbaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/2010.06.29-Analysis...)
The $1.2 million number is on page 8 of the PDF Ralph mentioned above.
http://www.csbaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/2010.06.29-Analysis...
With regard to the fuel costs, according to Thomas Friedman, in "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", a huge proportion of the fuel is used is to run generators to cool people who are living and working in tents. Of course, the cost of trucking that fuel to a base can be astronomical!
I agree with John Walter's comment above.
In 2009, Dakota Wood, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington stated that "the annual cost of a U.S. soldier is about $1 million in Afghanistan, with fuel costs associated with supporting that soldier accounting for between $200,000 to $350,000 of the total."
Looks like this is old data ... not surprising that the costs have risen, but it is odd that the fuel costs are in the same range.
Please list your source (and date of the data).
THANKS.
Yeah, I'm exhausted by numbers with no source. Coming from academia, I can tell you that the professor wouldn't accept a paper without references. Why should I accept random numbers from journalists without at least a basic effort to document the source?
If I can't look it up, it didn't happen.
The 1.2 million number is quoted in Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-06/pakistan-pays-price-for-hauling... and the full text of the CSBA Analysis of the FY 2011 Defense Budget [http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2010/06/fy-2011-defense-budget-an.... I believe the ultimate source is the DoD FY2011 Budget Request Overview, but I was unable to find the 1.2 million figure in a cursory scan of the 92-page PDF :(
I can not find the source of the numbers being cited to represent the cost of supporting a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan. I have gone to theglobalist.com and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment website (http://www.csbaonline.org/) and I cant find where they are getting these numbers from. Please, someone help me to find the source. It kills me when such important information is not properly cited. Thank you.
