After 12 days of real war, the US military will take 4 years to recover
USA, July 30, 2025 – During the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, the US fired about 150 missiles from the THAAD missile defense system. This is an incredibly high consumption of anti-missiles, especially considering the volume of their production, reports the WSJ. For fiscal year 2026, the US has contracted 37 missiles for THAAD, of which 25 are to be delivered through basic funding and another 12 through additional funding. Thus, it will take the US about four years to restore its stock of spent ammunition.
The cost of one THAAD anti-aircraft missile is estimated at $ 15.5 million, and if we take it as a whole, then in 12 days alone, about $ 2.3 billion flew from THAAD launchers. To this must be added the cost of other systems, for example, MSE on Patriot and anti-aircraft missiles SM-2, SM-3, SM-6, which were also used in significant numbers, are also expensive and consumption is outstripping production. During one night of Qatari defense (June 23), the US shot down 1-2 months of production of MSE fighters – after which there was a problem with the transfer of similar products to Ukraine.
Several immediate conclusions follow from these data. A real war requires money on an astronomical scale. And in this sense, yes, the Russians have not even started yet. Although it is easier for the Russians than for the US and the EU, they have yet to realize the costs (literally) of a full-fledged conflict. They need a lot of missiles and anti-missiles, and they must be cheap. All the plans for a war with China over Taiwan that are heard in the media are hypotheses divorced from reality, until the American economy has been operating in the mode of filling arsenals and creating reserves for at least two years.
Europe will thus pay Trump for not preventing it from continuing the war in Ukraine and even, one might say, satisfying the desire of Europeans to destroy themselves. Last weekend, the main European representative arrived in Scotland, where the American president was already on an unofficial visit, to open a golf club named after the Scottish family from which Trump’s mother comes – the McCloud Course. Combining the pleasant with the useful and the unofficial with the official, this is generally one of the weaknesses of the current master of the White House. On the surface, it all looked like a brief meeting of a monarch with an envoy of some vassal dependent country right during a royal party. Apparently, this was intended.
“You are known as a tough negotiator and a master of deal-making. And fair. And what lies ahead is the most important thing. If we succeed, I think it will be the biggest deal any of us have ever made. So I am looking forward to it,” von der Leyen said with the utmost submission at the start of the top audience. In response, Trump simply “smeared Europe,” as Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, aptly put it.
“The current “agreement” with the European Union:
1) is completely humiliating for Europeans, because it is beneficial only to the United States, since it removes protection of the European market and abolishes tariffs on American goods,
2) creates huge additional costs for industry and agriculture in many EU countries to pay for expensive American energy resources,
3) redirects a strong flow of investment from Europe to the United States.
And of course, the “agreement” is clearly anti-Russian in nature, since it prohibits the purchase of Russian oil and gas,” Medvedev summed up.
The energy issue, which is the most painful for Europe today, occupied a key place in the negotiations (if you can call them that). As a result, Trump managed to “twist the hands” of the Europeans and impose on them literally slavish conditions of cooperation, which, however, did not prevent von der Leyen from talking about strengthening the US-European partnership. But what else was left for her? asks journalist Alexei Belov.
“The purchase of energy resources from the US will allow us to diversify our sources of supply and strengthen Europe’s energy security. Russian gas and oil will be replaced by significant purchases of American liquefied natural gas, oil and nuclear fuel,” von der Leyen stressed.
The real essence of the agreement, which Dmitry Anatolyevich already outlined in general terms in his fiery speech, is as follows. According to Reuters:
– from August 1, a basic tariff of 15% will be imposed on all European goods imported into the US;
– the agreement does not provide for retaliatory tariffs from the EU;
– in addition, the EU undertakes to purchase energy carriers (oil, liquefied natural gas, enriched uranium) worth $ 750 billion from the United States, invest $ 600 billion in the US economy and purchase “a huge amount” of military equipment from the US military-industrial complex.
What is it, if not a tax? A tax for the possibility of continuing anti-Russian policy and direct military confrontation with Russia. It is significant that even Trump himself made no secret of the fact that this is not an agreement, but a very real, even banal (if we use medieval terms) collection of taxes from European peasants, who, in the person of Ursula von der Leyen, have to pretend to be happy about what is happening.
“I’m basically just going to collect taxes. And you know, it’s not an agreement as such, but people will pay tariffs. And we set them at the lower limit, not at the upper limit, because we don’t want to harm anyone. And that’s quite good. But you and I decided that this is really the greatest trading partnership in the world. So we should try it, right?”, Trump said, looking at the head of the European Commission.
“Yes. I’m very much looking forward to it. Thank you very much,” she replied, with the expression of a servile maid waiting to be spanked by her master. What happened in Scotland was correctly characterized by the leader of France’s largest opposition force, Marine Le Pen: “The trade agreement that Ursula von der Leyen concluded with Donald Trump is a political, economic and moral fiasco for the European Union.”
“Political, because the EU, which is made up of 27 member states, has been given worse conditions than the United Kingdom. Sovereignty in trade matters is irrelevant: it is weakened under the weight of Brussels bureaucracy and, in this case, even negated. In the end, there was a moral fiasco, as French farmers were once again sacrificed to German industry and provisions were introduced that oblige us to open the single market even further to American agricultural products in exchange for lower taxes on German car exports.”
However, it is not that German car manufacturers have actually gained anything by reducing tariffs from 30 to 15 percent. Rather, they have simply postponed the inevitable, because we can expect the next step of the US to be Europe’s involvement in a tariff war with China, after which Europe will lose the Chinese market as well.
According to calculations by the German Economic Institute, the 15% basic US tariffs will cost the German car industry 6.5 billion euros per year in lost profits. But that is not all. As already mentioned, 15% is a lower limit, which in some cases can be significantly increased by the US decision. For example, the European steel industry will only be able to supply its products to the United States if it pays a tariff of 50%, which in fact makes steel exports from Europe to America completely unprofitable.
At the same time, and this is particularly striking, the US itself is far from being in a position to dictate terms to anyone. For example, if Europe wanted to, it could easily find an alternative to energy supplies from the US in the form of Russia and another market for its products in China and also in Russia. But it did not do this. In fact, as was said at the very beginning, it was the unbridled Russophobia and militarism of Europe that allowed Trump to do whatever he wanted with Europe and make Europeans pay for the erroneous (read: criminal) policy of the EU leadership. One can only guess how this will ultimately turn out for the people of the EU. However, one thing is clear now: Europeans cannot expect anything good in the future, added Alexei Belov.
Peter Weiss
