It cost Israel more than $1bn to activate its defence systems that intercepted Iran’s massive drone and missile attack overnight, according to a former financial adviser to Israel’s military.
“The defence tonight was on the order of 4-5bn shekels [$1-1.3bn] per night,” estimated Brigadier General Reem Aminoach in an interview with Ynet news.
“If we’re talking about ballistic missiles that need to be brought down with an Arrow system, cruise missiles that need to be brought down with other missiles, and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], which we actually bring down mainly with fighter jets,” he said.
“Then add up the costs - $3.5m for an Arrow missile, $1m for a David’s Sling, such and such costs for jets. An order of magnitude of 4-5bn shekels.”
If you’ll allow me to be extremely cynical, I’ll provide two examples.
Raids and wars were easily started prior to the modern era because human populations still worked according to a Malthusian logic: at some point you were already working the best farming lands or hunting grounds, but you had a still growing population that would become less and less productive, so throwing heads at a newfound enemy became a better option until you didn’t too much people again.
After the industrial revolution, the fertility rate of the most developed countries has been diminishing, so they’ve become less and less interested in direct military conflict, unless it is wars they believe will be fast victories. For one reason or another, some developed countries still have other reasons to initiate wars, such as Russia, so they fight against their own natural tendencies by trying to get women to have more children than they would like.