But at the cost of how many others?
Material losses include two C-130 planes and two Little Bird helicopters abandoned on ground.
I don’t know if they had human casualties, but it seems they spent about 200 million dollars to rescue the pilots.
Pretty expensive.
The US military reports the cost of individual airframes as “lifetime cost to operate” (it’s required to by law) — this includes things like crewing, maintenance, and fuel over a 30-50 year scheduled lifetime, as well as development costs.
Cost of procurement is much lower. So, it doesn’t cost $200 million to replace those platforms. It’s certainly not cheap, just nowhere near that much.
Thanks, I didn’t know that and accidentally provided an over-estimate.
It’s not like you were wrong; it’s just that some context can help.
Eh, he was unambiguously wrong though? Not that it is forbidden to be wrong, mistakes happen.
Assume a new airframe replacement was hypothetically bought tomorrow, to take the destroyed airframe’s place. That makes it very clear that the cost sustained by the US is not “lifetime cost to operate”.
From a strategic view of the war as a whole, $200 million is not a lot. If it keeps Iran from having US prisoners of war.
If the US was presented up front with an option of a) pay $200 million or b) give Iran 2 US prisoners of war, then there is zero doubt that the US would gladly take the deal. Politically, it is a no-brainer choice.
Idk Jan, I find it hard to believe coming from the liars administration. At this point, word from the US propaganda machine have the same (or even less) value than those from the Iranian one. I’m gonna need proof of that to believe it, given the circumstances, and I’m gonna need irrefutable proof, not just a picture.
Sigh… He shouldve caught by Iran and shouldve paraded through streets of tehran
There has been talk about Trump just “declaring victory”, and then going home. If Iran had held these two Americans as prisoners of war, that would have been much harder for Trump to do.
On the other hand, it would give a kind of symbolic win to trump in a peace plan, a PoW exchange could have been a way for Trump to get something out of the war.
Now, let’s hope that nobody else was killed during that rescue mission