How the Iran war is wasting American resources

Accessibility links Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player Open Navigation Menu --> Newsletters NPR Shop Close Navigation Menu Home News Expand/collapse submenu for News National World Politics Business Health Science Climate Race Culture Expand/collapse submenu for Culture Books Movies Television Pop Culture Food Art & Design Performing Arts Life Kit Gaming Music Expand/collapse submenu for Music Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions The Best Music of 2025 Podcasts & Shows Expand/collapse submenu for Podcasts & Shows Daily Morning Edition Weekend Edition Saturday Weekend Edition Sunday All Things Considered Up First Here & Now NPR Politics Podcast Featured Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! military is using some of the most advanced and expensive weapons that it has - for example, the Tomahawk, a precision guided missile that can cost as much as $3 1/2 million apiece. Iran, by contrast, is fighting back with relatively simple weapons like drones, which might only cost a few thousand dollars each. This asymmetry in firepower poses a very costly and real conundrum for the Pentagon. And here to explain why, we are joined by NPR's Darian Woods. Darian is co-host of our daily economics podcast, The Indicator From Planet Money, which is also my normal day job, and Darian joins us now. Thanks for being here, Darian. DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: Yeah, great to be here. MA: And Darian, can you start off by telling us more about the kinds of weapons the U.S. and Iran have been using and how they're using them? WOODS: Yeah, so the U.S. has been using things like Patriot interceptors that help protect against missiles and drones. It's also been using things like Tomahawk missiles. These are guided missiles. They're very advanced, filled with all kinds of electronic circuitry. MA: And I understand that military folks have a kind of interesting name for the kind of weapons the U.S. is using. WOODS: Yeah, so the term is exquisite weapons. This is a term that's been in use in the military. It was popularized in the late 2000s. Really, it's a critique of too much focus on the really high-end ships, planes, munitions, like the guided missiles that we've been talking about. And this has created this kind of asymmetry of warfare economics in the current war. I spoke to Jerry McGinn. He is the director of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. JERRY MCGINN: They launch a lot of drones to try to have the U.S. kind of use their more exquisite weapons to knock them down and deplete our stores. MA: So, in essence, it sounds like Iran - if it's not quite matching the U.S. firepower, they're still holding their own with an arsenal of weapons that is costing them much less. WOODS: I mean, don't get me wrong. The U.S. has targeted and destroyed a lot of targets in Iran. But what Iran has figured out is how to make this costly for the U.S. and Israel. MA: And can you tell us more about the drones that Iran has been using? Like, what do they look like? How do they work? WOODS: Yeah, so imagine an 11-foot-long missile with big, wide wings. This is not like a consumer drone with four blades that you might take up hiking and take some photos of you. This is a weapon that's designed to fly into a target, blow it up. It's about the size of a go-kart, and they're pretty cheap for Iran to produce. MA: So these are nowhere near as costly as the kinds of missiles that the U.S. has been using. WOODS: Estimates vary, but these could cost as little as $4,000 apiece. MA: So, you know, we're three weeks into this war. We've established that the U.S. and Iran are using very different kinds of weapons. How does this add up in terms of the cost for the U.S. as it continues to conduct this war and can it continue with this strategy? WOODS: By day 12, the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the U.S. military cost at $16.5 billion. And on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has asked the White House to approve more than $200 billion to fund the war in Iran. And to put that into perspective, it's about $585 for every American. A huge part of these costs have been the munitions, the so-called exquisite weapons, the billions of dollars worth of Tomahawks and Patriot missiles that have been launched. And so just to give a sense of how much has been sent from the U.S. side, in the first three days of the war, the U.S. drained an estimated 10% of its Tomahawk inventory. So this has gutted supplies so much that, according to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is moving parts of its missile defense system from South Korea and its Patriots from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. And the issue isn't just the cost. It's that these take 18 months or longer to make. MA: So that being the case, how is the U.S. adapting to Iran's use of these, like, massive fleets of drones? WOODS: So the Pentagon saw this coming to some extent. Last year, they set a target to procure 200,000 drones for themselves by 2027. This is an area that is newer for the U.S. It announced last year what is called the LUCAS drone. This is an American drone very similar to the Iranian drone. In fact, so similar, it is reverse engineered from the Iranian drone, and this is being used for the first time in this war. MA: If you want to hear more on this, you can check out The Indicator From Planet Money podcast. We've been speaking with Darian Woods, who co-hosts it. Thanks for being here, Darian. WOODS: Yeah, thanks. Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. 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