Costs of War
October 7, 2025
Tags William D. Hartung
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U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, October 2023 – September 2025

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In the two years since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the U.S. government has spent $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel, according to policy analyst William D. Hartung (Senior Research Fellow, Quincy Institute). This figure does not include the tens of billions of dollars in arms sales agreements that have been committed for weapons and services that will be paid for and delivered in the years to come.

Photo by Heidi Levine (July 30, 2025) showing an aerial view of Gaza destruction, taken during a Royal Jordanian military flight for a humanitarian aid mission.

U.S. arms have been central to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Police operations in Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond. The weapons in Israel’s existing inventory that are being used in Gaza and the broader Middle East come mainly from the United States. Israel’s entire inventory of combat capable aircraft comes from the U.S., including 75 F-15s, 196 F-16s, and 39 F-35s. Israel’s attack and transport helicopters are also all of U.S. origin, including 46 Apache helicopters and 25 Sea Stallion and 49 Black Hawk transport helicopters. Israel’s U.S.-supplied weapons – which include not only its combat aircraft but also tens of thousands of bombs and missiles, and advanced targeting systems – have inflicted a devastating humanitarian toll on the people of Gaza. 

According to a companion report, the U.S. has spent an additional $9.65 – $12.07 billion on military operations in Yemen and the wider region sparked by or in support of Israeli military operations since October 7, 2023, for a total of $31.35 – $33.77 billion and counting in U.S. spending on two years of post-10/7 wars. 

This spending has come with an extensive human toll: over ten percent of the population of Gaza has been killed or injured, while at least 5.27 million people have been displaced in Gaza and the wider region.

 

See Related Papers

Costs of United States Military Activities in the Wider Middle East Since October 7, 2023

Mass Displacement since October 7, 2023: Flight from War, Genocide, and Expulsion in Gaza, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and the West Bank

The Human Toll of the Gaza War: Direct and Indirect Death from 7 October 2023 to 3 October 2025

About the Authors

  • William Hartung

    William D. Hartung

    Senior Research Fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
    hartung@quincyinst.org
    Website

    William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget. He was previously the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-director of the Center's Sustainable Defense Task Force. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). His previous books include And Weapons for All (HarperCollins, 1995), a critique of U.S. arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations. From July 2007 through March 2011, Mr. Hartung was the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Prior to that, he served as the director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams. Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal. He has been a featured expert on national security issues on CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News, the PBS Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international radio outlets.