Why does a fire truck cost $2m
156 comments
·July 28, 2025crystal_revenge
henry2023
It’s daunting to think that all your lifetime contributions to the IRS might be spent launching one or two Javeline missiles in the Middle East.
Gigachad
It’ll be worth denying all those local citizens healthcare just so that some people far away can be blown up.
rayiner
The federal government alone spends $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare. That's enough to buy almost a million Tomahawk missiles every year. The total production will be around 9,000 missiles over 46 years, or less than 200 per year. We do not meaningfully choose between paying for healthcare domestically and blowing up foreigners. Even overthrowing Iraq's government and trying to make it a democracy only cost about $2.4 trillion over 10 years.
dragonwriter
The US, by all evidence, spends more on its non-universal, gap-prone, healthcare system than any reasonable (single-payer, government-provided, or mostly private insurance with universal guarantee) universal healthcare system would cost; the US spends ludicrously more than any other country per capita, and much more than most universal systems on a per GDP basis (heck, the government side of the US system alone costs a greater share of GDP than some universal systems, and more per capita than basically any of them, even without counting the larger private side.)
The US doesn't deny local citizens healthcare so that some people far away can be blown up. If anything, it limits its ability to blow people up far away with all the extra money it is spending locally to prevent people from getting healthcare.
But the US has lots of money, so it still finds quite a bit for blowing people up far away.
sidewndr46
There's apparently at one least cruise missile variant that basically mounts a sword on the warhead with a thin fairing. It's apparently used for killing a single target
dilawar
Blowing up is so 2020s. These days you starve them to death like it's the 1940s.
lotsofpulp
Healthcare spend, not including state and local governments, is many multiples of military spend:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
therein
With the amount of money printing going on, it is really insincere for them to create that false dichotomy anyway. It was never about which one out of the two we could afford.
brookst
Fortunately there are hundreds of millions of other people also paying taxes, so the Middle East can be sufficiently showered in javelin missiles.
littlestymaar
Reminds me of this quote
“ Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”
thrance
Yes, but think about how much money ends up in the pockets of private contractors, and how much suffering it causes. Don't you feel better?
Workaccount2
It's in part because the military doesn't buy stuff from China.
The companies that make the parts for those missiles (not just the mega corp whose badge is on it) are likely only in business because they make the parts for it, and employ 20-200 people with decent pay and full benefits in Corn County, Midwest to do it.
On the surface it looks like enormous waste, it still might be, but understand that the defense budget is primarily a jobs program and basically only thing propping up Americans manufacturing.
This is why it never gets cut, but anyone red or blue. It employs way to many people and in way to many places without much good work. Republicans especially hate welfare, but if you can get people to show up and turn screws, they'll happily "waste" money on them.
numpad0
They also arbitrarily reduce numbers and raise unit costs by regulations because weapons bad, though they are dropped asymmetrically on living people anyway. The US isn't incentivizing weapons correctly for them to improve in cost performance.
derektank
I mean, there is also the strategic benefit of not having your capacity to wage war in the stranglehold of a potential adversary. Not to say that politicians won't vote for graft that helps their districts, but there is a legitimate argument for employing only Americans in wartime industries.
But yes, that's a big source of the expense. Even on the IT side of things, the government (especially the military) pays sometimes up to 50% more for FedRAMP versions of SaaS products that have their servers based in the US and which are only administered by US citizens.
DoesntMatter22
I mean it definitely has to be monumental waste. Look at the cost of launching rockets prior to SpaceX versus the cost now which is really a pittance by comparison.
Not that I want to see anybody build bombs
hx8
If you are going to blow something up, using these GPS guided smart missiles is actually much cheaper than previous generations of explosive ordinances.
1. You can only use one missile to hit a target. In pre-gps era we would would dozens or hundreds of rounds to ensure one of them destroys the target.
2. You can fire from a safe distance. Using artillery or dropping bombs from an airplane involves physically getting closer to the target. This introduces much more complexity that adds to the overall cost.
3. There is significantly less collateral damage when using a single missile for a target compared to bombing the general direction of the target.
4. We take significantly less risk of casualties when using these missiles.
KennyBlanken
Except that because of all those things, the government is more likely to use it so the "it's cheaper!" argument doesn't hold water.
The comparison is not between "do it without smart bombs and drones" vs "do it with smart bombs and drones" and the former costing more.
The comparison is between "if we didn't have the smart bombs and drones, we wouldn't have done anything because whatever it was wouldn't have been worth the cost in money and American lives" versus "we spent a million dollars blowing up some stuff because we could do it on the cheap and with no risk."
On a broader scale the US's involvemnt in the foreign affairs of other nations skyrocketed when we went from having volunteer armed forces to a "professional" armed forces. Ike predicted as much in his rant about the military-industrial complex.
patmorgan23
We're shocked they cost $2 million dollars because until recently they didn't, and it's not because of inflation, it's because private equity has bought up most of the industry, consolidated it, and jacked up prices.
bigfatkitten
> Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much
The only place in the entire world where fire trucks cost that much is North America, and it’s not because there’s anything inherently special about trucks made there.
stinkbeetle
> I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Isn't military spending and the corruption of the government military industrial complex one of the oldest gripes in the American public forum? People sure are outraged about it, or were[1] -- has that become passe now?
[1] "The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement." -- Eisenhower 1953
readthenotes1
It didn't really take off until WW2--Eisenhower warned us of the military-industrial complex in his last days in office, but chickened out of of military-industrial-congressional complex at the last minute apparently.
There was no real standing Army until WW2 since it's against the Constitution. That's why the Marines (part of the Navy) were all over the place supporting US business interests, but not draining the public purse too heavily (look up Smedly Butler for a good read)
nindalf
> There was no real standing Army until WW2 since it's against the Constitution.
This isn’t true. Firstly it isn’t against the Constitution to maintain a standing Army. What the Constitution says in Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 is “The Congress shall have Power To ...raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years...”
The people drafting the Constitution knew that a standing army could be abused by a tyrant, but having served in the Continental Army also knew how vital a standing Army was to maintain peace. That’s why they designed it so Congress controls the purse strings and authorises military spending only for 2 years at a time. The executive may give the orders, but there’s a time limit on the Army he can give orders to.
And the second part - the US has had a standing Army since 1796. You remember Robert E Lee resigning from the Army to join the Confederacy? If there was no standing Army, what did he resign from?
But even leaving aside these two historical facts, think about it logically. Throughout history military advantage has always been with the better trained, more experienced troops. Even if you rely on conscripts in a war, they need to be trained and led by professionals. Saying a standing army shouldn’t exist is like firing all your developers and saying you’ll start hiring when you get a few bug reports in.
ForOldHack
Look up Smedly Butler for a great read!!!
onecommentman
I think if Ike was shown that the military industrial complex had prevented the occurrence of WWIII for nearly 80 years while maintaining economic growth and quality of life for US citizens, he would have withdrawn his reservations. He, above all, knew the alternatives.
burnt-resistor
$24 billion in American taxpayer money went to Israel in 2024, or about $65M/day. That's 32 equivalent of those. Each and every day. And this is what enables burying/killing a wide ranging, unknowable number (60k-200k?) of humans, half of whom were children, by systematic aerial bombardment using 2000 lbs. unguided Mk. 84's into urban areas and terrestrial structural demolitions, forced concentration/ethnic cleansing, and engineered famine by siege. Not all Israelis and Americans are okay with this, but protesting so far hasn't made much difference.
Aeolun
> I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.
Would those costs still be obscene if you were in a conflict where you’d want to use a significant number of them? Right now they’re expensive because they’re essentially just sitting around.
nine_k
Speaking of Javelin missiles, mentioned upthread. In 2022, when the war in Ukraine erupted, the small stock of Javelins which the NATO countries were able to provide was spent in like first several months. After that, $300 drones carrying a $1000 armor-piercing round started to dominate the battlefield, leading to terrible losses in Russian armor, especially the newest and most expensive tanks. Similarly, having lost a number of advanced and expensive aircraft, and watching advanced and expensive cruise missiles mostly shot down during airstrikes, Russian forces turned to expendable drones imported from Iran (!) and expendable rockets imported from North Korea (!!).
In other terms, Protoss-type technology works well when you have a large advantage and need to deal a decisive blow; an example would be B-2s bombing the Iran nuclear facilities. But when you're in a protracted conflict against a capable adversary, Zerg-type technology, cheap, flimsy, and truly massively produced, seems to be indispensable.
germinalphrase
“ Right now they’re expensive because they’re essentially just sitting around.”
Why do you think that’s the reason for these high prices rather than, say, lack of competition?
terminalshort
No economy of scale. The cost to build one car is ~$100 million. The cost to build the second one is ~$20K. The only reason you can buy a car for $40K is because they build millions of them to spread the initial investment. The military buys missiles in units of 100s and there are no other buyers, so the cost per missile is massive.
nradov
Those contracts are put out for competitive bids. Profit margins for defense contractors aren't very high. The prices are driven by a combination of strict requirements, lack of economies of scale, and legal compliance with government mandated processes.
bell-cot
If the defense contractors figured they could get away with those costs, at higher volume? Hell, yes.
If the U.S. still had it's own (gov't-owned, gov't-operated) production facilities - as, historically, every A List nation has had - to provide honest competition? Hell, no.
History: The not-even-yet-the-U.S.A. set up the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory in 1777, to manufacture military ammumition. And the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Yard in 1799.
sema4hacker
Our community has three large fire trucks, and one is sent out for every 911 call, even though the vast majority of calls are for medical emergencies, not something requiring a fire truck (which always arrives quickly, but a subsequent ambulance on call is what inevitably hauls a patient to the hospital). I've never understood why the fire department doesn't acquire and dispatch small vehicles for all those medical calls instead of a giant fire truck. Seems like that would help hold down costs.
JeremyMorgan
Valid question, and I hear it all the time. Most of the time it's due to preparedness and staffing. By having those 4 people on a fully equipped engine, if something big (structure fire, vehicle extrication, rescue) happens, they can jump in and go with a vehicle full of tools. (provided the ambulance crew can take over).
Otherwise if they're in a car, they'd have to drive back through traffic to the station, move their gear to the new vehicle, and drive back to the scene. It can cost valuable time. Fire engines carry a surprisingly large amount of tools and equipment for a variety of purposes.
That being said, many larger departments are trying out "cars" (usually an SUV) with two people and a med bag to go to medical calls. While the engine/truck and crew stay at the station. This is fairly expensive with the new vehicle, equipment and extra staffing. However it is being done now with success in urban areas.
insane_dreamer
but the ambulance crew already has a paramedic, so why do they also need one from the fire department?
brudgers
The fire truck goes because it has a paramedic.
It needs a paramedic because fire fighters often need paramedics.
So if the small vehicle has a paramedic, you still need one for the big truck.
And if you have another vehicle, you need a bigger apparatus bay at the station and more beds and more staff times three shifts.
Finally, when the 911 call comes in there is not time to triage. The system is optimized for response time because people might die.
dominick-cc
I assumed it's so it gets used, otherwise it would just sit there and might not work when needed
coryrc
> Seems like that would help hold down costs.
That's not a goal.
softgrow
Fire and rescue appliances are a bit of a problematic thing to buy as they never go very far and are retired with low mileages.
In my Australian State, South Australia, this a huge contrast with police who buy new from the manufacturer, get a three or maybe five year service contract from the manufacturer and then sell them when the warranty expires and they've done around 100,000 km (60,000 miles). So no servicing worries and they get some tax benefits so it works for them.
Ambulances have less mileage and my guess is retire after 10 years. Ambulances are very standardised so can swap metro and country vehicles to get value from the asset. There was a "twin life" ambulance (http://www.old-ambulance.com/Twin-Life.htm) that had a long life rear bit on a light truck chassis so swap out the motor bit two or three times every 200,000kms, but these days vans are used. There was much sadness in the ambulance fleet buying community when Ford discontinued the F150 type chassis in Australia.
But your average (fire/rescue) appliance in the city or country has low mileage. In the city plenty of use but never have to drive far. In the country not much use but do drive further but end up the same a very old vehicle without much mileage on the clock. Trailers can be even older 50 or 60 years before retirement. Another issue with a fire appliance is they carry water which is heavy, three tonnes is a pretty common load. And have other readers have mentioned a monopoly on manufacture wouldn't help.
waste_monk
I have heard that the problem with ex-emergency services vehicles is they tend to have low distance on the odometer but drastically higher engine hours, particularly idle hours. That is, they may sit with the engine idling for hours at a time to maintain power to the lights, radios, and other vehicle systems, and are generally closer in wear and tear to a vehicle with several times the mileage.
Another problem I have heard of is that while the actual mileage may be low, the miles that are driven tend to be much "harder", in the sense that an emergency services vehicle may be accelerating and stopping rapidly, and generally being thrashed without regard for the vehicle, leading to increased wear on the engine and transmission.
It reminds me of the saying attributed to Jeremy Clarkson, about the fastest car in the world being a rental.
chrisg23
Here’s a good video with overlap on the reasons causing this, with current cost comparisons for Chinese made fire trucks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78nZ-JJNmzQ
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choonway
even at 100% tarriffs US is still not competitive.
throwaway13337
The real cost of the American fire truck is in the roads it forces to be extra wide. It’s those trucks that make it necessary to have oversized neighborhood streets. Most countries don’t need that.
In Europe, you’ll see small, peaceful neighborhoods where people naturally drive slower on narrower roads. More greenspace. Less asphalt. They have small fire trucks that can navigate those streets just fine.
There’s really no reason they need to be so massive. It's a choice.
DoesntMatter22
That works a lot better in Europe because realistically it's a lot smaller. America is absolutely gigantic
Yacoby
I'm not sure I understand your point. Just because the country is large doesn't necessarily mean that you need larger fire trucks?
(Or that America needs a one size fits all approach to fire trucks - things that work well in cities may not work well in rural areas)
TheTxT
What does the size of the country have to do with the size of firetrucks?
trailrunner46
These numbers for trucks paired with the 3+ year wait times are very real. It hits small communities the hard because they have a small tax base but still need a certain amount of trucks. You can only consolidate so much before you are to far to respond.
Another good point called out in the article are the floating costs. The manufactures do in fact increase the costs after the fact so not only do you need to order a truck years ahead of time with a budget you don’t have (borrow money) but then you have to cough up an indeterminate amount of money years later. A real sad time for first responders.
bensonn
My two cents of info as mildly informed. I am a volunteer ff/emt.
My department is very well funded compared to the rest of our county. Compared to cities, it is laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics, only EMTs (about 4).
An Engine not only has to run but has to pump. An engine may drive 3 miles but then run for 20 hours without moving but pumping water the entire time (using the transmission to do so). If the pump is not up to standards, FFs do not enter a building. No water, no entry. If the pump isn't compliant then it is not longer an "engine". Mileage is irrelevant. A low mileage engine (10k) might have a million other problems after 100k hours. Who fixes that in a volunteer department?
Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board. In the city the answer is always transport. If you have 1 ambulance and 6 hours round trip, you may stay on scene for a while to avoid a transport (assuming you don't risk the patient's life).
Most volunteer departments have 1-2 engines, and those are aging. If an engine goes out of service without a replacement, we stop responding.
This is not a city/rural problem. If you have ever taken a road trip, gone camping, visited relatives in "the country", then then you are relying on, and praying they have the equipment and staff to respond. Go outside the city for a rafting trip- swiftwater, rope rescue, EMS, traffic... all in the hands of volunteers with no resources.
Back to the article- we have one engine out of service. We can't buy 20x our tax revenue. Yes, everything has gone up in price. When EMS and Fire becomes unpurchaseable, there are (dire) consequences.
JeremyMorgan
This is exactly it. I'm also a volunteer for a small town, in a department that is decently funded. We have had the same two engines since 2009. We just (within the last month) received a new engine. It became extremely difficult to provide the level of service the community expects, and come up with money for a new engine. It's a major struggle.
Also something most folks don't know: about 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. If you're in a big city you'll have 4 paid folks on an engine (maybe 3 and 1 intern) but as soon as you venture out of the city you'll see more engines 100% staffed by volunteers. And if you don't know the difference that's a good thing!
Fire departments run on budgets that would also shock you (how low they are).
coryrc
> It became extremely difficult to provide the level of service the community expects, and come up with money for a new engine.
It's too bad the only possible way to pump water is with a $2M specialty truck. Let's just raise taxes.
throwaway2037
Thanks for the first hand feedback. It is helpful. When I read your post carefully ("laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics"; "Who fixes that in a volunteer department?"), the first thing that crossed my mind is your tax revenue is just too low. You cannot have nice things with low taxes.
Another way to think about it: Are other highly developed nations seeing the same "crisis(es)" that you mention? (Think G-7 and close friends.) Hint: They do not.
petra303
I would think it’s more about economy of scale. If you tried to build a car without any of the standard parts being available, it would be expensive.
actuallyalys
That explains why they're expensive, but not why they're more expensive than they were before.
phendrenad2
It says that cost for a regular fire truck has increased from 300-500k to 1mil from 2010 to 2025. Considering house and car prices have doubled, we can chalk most of that up to purely inflation. Seems like another case of forgetting that inflation has been sky-high due to botched COVID response and what would be a good story in previous decades just, isn't.
8bitsrule
The article makes it abundantly clear (down a ways from the top) that much of the cost increase is due to small companies being acquired by monopolists. E.g.
> Fast forward 60 years, and those businesses were contending with aging founders, depleted municipal budgets, and declining fire-truck orders. Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.... the REV Group, now one of the three leading manufacturers of fire trucks in the U.S. REV captures about a third of the country’s $3B in annual fire truck sales ...
twoodfin
“About a third” doesn’t sound anywhere near a monopoly to me.
This is all demand-side inflation: For any number of better and worse reasons (mostly worse), as building codes have gotten stricter and fires have become rarer, municipal spending on fire departments has exploded. Well-funded fire departments buy more expensive trucks than they probably need, just like well-funded police departments buy military-class SWAT equipment they probably don’t need.
arrosenberg
Monopoly is a misnomer, because it implies a single seller. In reality any market with a small number of incumbents will exhibit anti-competitive behavior, which is what people usually mean when they talk about monopolies and antitrust law. With a third of the market, a single company can effectively set prices based on desired margins, rather than having to compete on price.
Do you have evidence for your claim about well funded fire departments splurging on unneeded equipment? Police departments buy military surplus through federal programs that specifically encourage it [1]. It has nothing to do with how well funded they are, which is why you see that equipment show up even in smaller and poorer areas that don't have particularly well-funded police or the need for a Bradley fighting vehicle.
[1] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2020/06/12/police-departme...
8bitsrule
If there are two more companies just like that one, that's 3-thirds of the business, right?
Point is, what's to stop that from happening? In that business or any other, it's bad for many, good for a very few.
In one side-effect, the wait time for a new truck has reached up to 4 years. And the contracts are being written so that the cost can go up during that wait.
brookst
A third of the market isn’t a monopoly, but it is enough economy of scale to allow for reaping huge profits if competing against a long tail of smaller competitors.
tomrod
That's an HHI of 1089 at best. Pretty high, indicating consolidation is a big deal.
Aunche
The most popular new car is the RAV4, which starts at $29,500 today [1]. In 2010, a new RAV4 retailed for $21,675 [2]. Dealers were more flexible with haggling back then, but at best, that's still only a 50% increase.
throwaway2037
This is a great stat. I asked Google what is the annualised inflation rate: It says 2.77%. That is still amazingly low. A lot has happened in those years -- quantitative easing plus COVID-19. Both were once-in-a-lifetime, enormous economic events.
giantg2
That's not a great comparison due to the difference volume can make on your fixed costs. Even taking a work trim Silverado isn't great, but even from 2017 until now it's almost doubled ($27k to $44k). I'd assume it would be even worse for a low volume vehicle like a fire truck.
BobbyTables2
How many people’s salary went up 50% in the same timeframe?
kgwgk
Most of them?
throwaway2037
Following from my other post above, it is only 2.77% inflation per year. Do you really think people haven't seen pay rises of at least 2.77% per year in those 15 years? It seems hard to believe.
sarchertech
That doesn’t explain the other half of the story which is that it takes 4-5 years to get one.
topspin
Standard low rate production effects. Equipment like fire trucks are full of weird, low volume things made by a few, or only one shop somewhere, built exclusively to order, with long lead times. A fire truck is simultaneously a mobile power station, a mobile high pressure water pump, a mobile communications base station, and a high performance all-terrain, all-weather vehicle. It has to do all of that without killing any firemen, so there are very high liability costs factored in. Also, every major department has a collection of hang-ups about how a fire truck is supposed to function and what it's compatible with, so there is no way to scale production.
The consolidation of suppliers for all of this is also a contributor to cost and delivery time. That problem is endemic throughout Western economies.
jacquesm
House prices are not typically a part of inflation.
throwaway2037
> botched COVID response
Animats
So why not M A N fire trucks? Those are widely used in the European Union, and are considered good quality.
dwd
Many of the MAN trucks in Europe are fitted out by a supplier like Rosenbauer (mentioned in the article) who pair a standard truck chassis (MAN, Scania, Mercedes, etc) with a modular equipment layout. You'll know their iconic Panther trucks which are used at many US and Canadian airports.
The cost quickly adds up once you start adding features, and they have a lot to choose from.
https://www.rosenbauer.com/en/au/rosenbauer-world/vehicles/m...
daft_pink
Is this really any different to pre-covid, I could negotiate $3k off a Toyota Sienna minivan and have my pick of color tomorrow and now there is a several month to a year waiting list and I have to pay $5k to 10k over MSRP and MSRP is up 20% since 2019?
qmr
You should never pay over MSRP.
You can get Siennas for $1-2k under MSRP. Shop around.
tomrod
Where?
paulryanrogers
I paid MSRP but had to go to a dealer further away. The nearest one had several thousands in markup. It magically evaporated when they found out where I was going, but trust had been lost.
toast0
If nothing else, check out fb groups. There's a toyotas at msrp group where dealers willing to work with long distance buyers post.
n20benn
Pre-sales tax + tag, or post?
tayo42
That seems crazy lol, why do siennas have a wait list? Is there really that much demand for a minivan? Or is it a supply thing?
chmod775
By the way the owners of AIP also happen to mostly be suppliers of materials for building these vehicles. They have a double incentive to abuse their monopoly position.
Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
returningfory2
The article says this company has one third of the market. This is not a monopoly.
ajsnigrutin
> Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
And immediately get 100% tarrifs :)
d4mi3n
Double 600k is still less than 2m. Might still be a viable tactic to bring down the current prices.
What's really wild is $2M is around the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile, Patriot missiles can cost almost double that. The Excalibur GPS guided round costs roughly as much as a nice Mercedes and during a conflict hundreds or thousands can be fired.
I came to this realization when learning about someone driving a car into a building to do damage and thinking "wow, that's an expensive round", then looking it up and realizing, it's not actually that expensive compared to how much military projectiles really do cost.
I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much, nor that military weapons aren't worth it. More that I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.