CGTN America
The United States spent nearly $11.5 billion from August 2014-January 31, 2017 on the fight against ISIL, according to Department of Defense documents.
The average daily cost of fighting the terrorist group is now $12.7 million a day.
Nearly 40 percent of U.S. funds spent — $4.6 billion — has been for military actions or missions known as “OPTEMPO”.
Munitions costs made up about 22 percent of the spending, while logistics support took up 19 percent.
Military pay and spending on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) were each less than one percent of the costs so far.
As of March 14, 2017, the U.S. and coalition forces have conducted a total of 18,948 strikes, with nearly 80 percent of those strikes by U.S. forces.
View a list of all the strikes here.
Spending on the fight against ISIL has steadily increased from $2.7 billion in June 2015.
Air strikes have represented the biggest cost of the fight — about 40 percent of all costs so far.
Mission support amounted to 38 percent of all U.S. spending so far.
U.S. and partner-nation aircraft have flown an estimated 143,510 attack missions — known as “sorties” — in Iraq and Syria between Aug. 8, 2014 and March 13, 2017.
Monthly civilian casualty reports are listed as news releases on the operation’s website. The Defense Department says that it is currently in the process of conducting an audit of it’s civilian casualty report tracking.
“To date, based on information available, CJTF-OIR assesses that, it is more likely than not, at least 220 civilians have been unintentionally killed by Coalition strikes since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve,” the Defense Department said on the operation website.
“We regret the unintentional loss of civilian lives resulting from Coalition efforts to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria and express our deepest sympathies to the families and others affected by these strikes.”
On March 22, 2017 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hosted a meeting of the global coalition on working to defeat ISIS.
As of March 22, the fight has lasted 958 days.
