(Steve Wilson, The Center Square) The cost for the U.S. strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, known as Operation Midnight Hammer, likely cost taxpayers more than $200 million, according to analysis by The Center Square of open-source data on flight hours, per-weapon costs and other expenses.
The strikes, which used B-2 Spirit bombers to drop 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs along with other supporting aircraft and submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, were carried out on Saturday night against three Iranian nuclear targets, which President Donald Trump said was a “spectacular military success.”
Each one of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, which are 30,000 pound bombs guided by the Global Positioning System and can smash through an unknown amount of rock and concrete to destroy hardened targets buried deep underground, cost about $3.5 million apiece, according to a 2011 Air Force contract that purchased eight of them for $28 million. With 14 dropped for Midnight Hammer, just the ordnance alone added up to $49 million.
The Air Force, in coordination with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, conducts testing of the GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrator weapon system, a precision-guided, bunker-busting munition purpose-built to defeat deeply buried and hardened targets on Dec. 11, 2020 and June 6, 2024.
The B-2 Spirit isn’t cheap to operate, as the stealth bomber dating back from the early 1990s requires special care to its radar-deflecting surface coatings that must be protected from the weather in hangars.
According to the U.S. General Accountability Office, each flying hour on a B-2, which includes fuel and maintenance, costs $150,741. With the strike taking 37 hours, each B-2 cost nearly $5.58 million to fly on the mission and $39 million total.
Trump said 52 tankers, plus F-22 and F-35 fighters were involved in the strike. Maximum fuel transfer for a KC-135 refueling plane is 150,000 pounds, while the newer KC-46 can transfer up to 212,000 pounds.
Multiple refuelings of the B-2s were required since the maximum takeoff weight of a B-2 is 336,500 pounds and they had to take off with a smaller fuel load than their maximum capacity (167,000 pounds).
This was due to carrying 60,000 pounds of two MOPs per airframe, which would put the Spirits 50,500 pounds over their maximum takeoff weight if fully loaded with fuel.
KC-135s cost $27,801 per flight hour to operate, while the newer KC-46s cost about $13,810 per flight hour. Assuming 12 hours flight time per tanker as they refueled the strikers three times, that would be $333,612 for each KC-135 and $165,720 for each KC-46.
Since the KC-135 is the majority of the U.S. Air Force’s tanker fleet (396 aircraft or 82% of the fleet), having 80% of the tankers, about 42, being KC-135s on Midnight Hammer, would cost about $14 million, while 10 KC-46s would be about $1.66 million. That leaves about $15.66 million for the tanker component of the mission.
According to data on Flightradar24, five KC-135s were spotted in the Mediterranean, while 10 tankers, a mixed flight of KC-135s and KC-46s, temporarily based out of Lajes Air Base in Portugal were orbiting in the Atlantic.
Added to that were the 25 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from U.S. submarines, which according to the Navy, cost about $2.4 million apiece or $60 million for the strike.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said that 75 precision-guided munitions were used in the strike, which included the 14 MOPs and 25 Tomahawk cruise missiles. According to a 2024 contract, the cost of a Joint Directed Attack Munition, a GPS-guided guidance kit added to the U.S. military’s 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK 84, the 1,000-pound BLU-110/MK 83 or the 500-pound BLU-111/MK 82 bombs, can range from $24,000 to $85,000 per weapon. Going with the lower number and assuming 30 weapons were dropped, that adds up to $720,000, or $2.55 million with the higher figure.
With the mention of “high-speed suppression weapons” designed to strike Iran’s surface to air missiles and their associated radars, those would be the targets of the AGM-88G missile, an advanced derivative of the original High Speed Antiradiation Missiles that debuted in 1983 and can be carried internally by the Air Force’s F-35A fighters.
According to the DOD, each AGM-88G costs $1.65 million per copy. If nine were expended by the B-2’s F-35 and likely F-16 escorts, that would be about $14.9 million.
The Air Force had moved F-22s, F-35s and F-16s to the Middle East, but the Defense Department didn’t say how many of each type was involved in the strike, only that “fourth generation (F-15Es and F-16s) and fifth generation (F-22s and F-35s) aircraft” were involved.
An F-22 costs $85,325 per flight hour, while F-35s ($41,986) and F-16s ($26,927) are cheaper. With 52 tankers, seven B-2 strike aircraft and an unknown number of surveillance and electronic warfare aircraft, that leaves anywhere from about 50 to 60 fighters involved in the strike.
Assuming that all 12 F-22s and 12 F-35s deployed to the theater recently participated in the strikes and their missions were about six hours apiece, each F-35 mission would cost about $251,916, while each F-22 one would cost $511,950. The total for the U.S. stealth fighters is $9.16 million.
