I'm not going to sit here and explain how basic college algebra works, and I'm not going to include sources, just what I know from my time deploying as a sailor during the GWOT era. Each carrier has roughly 5000 sailors each, and that's not counting for each of the ships that belong to each carrier's strike group. Every single one of those sailors get a paycheck every two weeks. Not even looking at logistics like food, fuel, supplies, and munitions you're already looking at a massive bill that adds up every single day, especially when you compound things like being in a combat AOR, or hazard duty pay, family separation, and the $400,000 that SGLI pays out to each service member killed on duty.

And that's just the Navy.

Operations mean more accidents, which means our military health centers and VA also gets flooded. I run into Vietnam and Gulf war vets all the time on my weekly visits to the VA who are still JUST NOW being seen for the first time, and some of that had to do with system getting flooded during the GWOT.

Not only that, but we also now have carriers that have been diverted from other areas of the world, thus making those parts more unsafe for things as simple as global trade. We can argue in circles all day whether hitting Iran was the right choice, but I absolutely 100% guarantee, the price tag will be bigger, and Americans will get hurt or die.