[DISCLAIMER: Not a fortune teller. I have no insight into the threat posed by Iran, no crystal ball to predict a future conflict with China in the Pacific, and tarot cards have not foreseen an expansion of the Ukraine–Russia war. I’m not the right person to determine whether President Trump is correct in proposing a record-setting $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027. Similar to Eisenhower’s speech, the following points are used only to demonstrate the high financial costs associated with modern warfare—not to determine whether the correct way to spend our limited tax dollars is “more bombs, new schools, or updated power plants.” Opinions may differ. Time will tell.]

It has been 73 years since President Eisenhower gave his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, but I think it is even more relevant today.
[Note: If you would like to listen to the speech (less than 30 minutes), it can be found at https://archive.org/details/dde_1953_0416. If you prefer to read the transcript, it can be found at https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v08/d583.]

For context, President Truman was in office from April 1945 until January 1953. During the Truman administration, military spending shifted from a post–World War II low of $13.5 billion to nearly $50 billion annually during the Korean War. When President Eisenhower succeeded Truman in January 1953, he viewed the Korean conflict as a failure of leadership and criticized this large outpouring of money to the arms industry.

In his April 1953 speech, President Eisenhower said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed… This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. 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 people. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”
[Note: President Trump also understands the trade-offs between funding a large military and funding other government programs. In a recent speech, he stated: “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care.”]

If President Eisenhower were to give this speech today to residents of Ohio, the figures and examples would likely be modified to include small-town expenses and Ohio-specific budgetary concerns compared to modern military costs. Here is an example:
•	Strasburg’s Athletic and Band Facility ($10 million) = one SM-3 Block IB missile ($9,698,617–$12,500,000).
[Note: The U.S. Navy likely fired 80 SM-3 IB missiles during the 12-day war in 2025, and an unknown number during the six weeks of EPIC FURY. The newer SM-3 IIA costs about three times more at $27,915,625 each.] 

•	New Philadelphia Schools (1 elementary / 1 high school: $72 million) = one F/A-18E/F Super Hornet ($70–75 million in the 1990s).
[Note: A single U.S. Navy carrier has about 40 F/A-18s. There are three carriers involved in EPIC FURY, so approximately 120 F/A-18s. The Navy currently has about 325 single-seat F/A-18Es and 250 two-seat F/A-18Fs in its inventory.]
 
•	U.S. Route 250 / Ohio 21 roundabout project ($3 million) = one PAC-3 Patriot missile ($3,729,769).
[Note: The Pentagon has received nearly 270 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement units per year since 2015. That number has begun to climb, with Lockheed Martin agreeing in January to a seven-year deal with the U.S. government to produce approximately 2,000 PAC-3 missiles per year.] 

•	2026 Ohio State hospital (820 beds: $1.9 billion) = one U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke–class destroyer ($2 billion).
[Note: Each U.S. carrier is escorted by about three destroyers, so EPIC FURY’s three carriers would have around nine. There are currently about 74 destroyers in the Navy’s inventory.]
 
•	Strasburg’s 2024 fire truck ($805,000) = a little less than half a tank of fuel for a single Arleigh Burke–class destroyer.
[Note: A destroyer can carry about 450,000 gallons of fuel. At roughly $4.88 per gallon, a full tank would cost about $2,196,000.] 

•	2026 Ohio Department of Transportation projects (739 bridges and 4,562 miles of road: $3.4 billion) = the first 100 hours of Operation Epic Fury.
[Note: Per the Center for Strategic and International Studies: $3.7 billion.]
 
These figures may make your head spin. I often struggle when dealing with numbers this large. Another way to look at it is to consider what could be accomplished if the $1,500,000,000,000 military budget were spent elsewhere.

•	$1.5 trillion would fund 150,000 Strasburg athletic and band facilities. There are only about 24,000 public high schools in the United States, so each could have six facilities. Since they likely don’t need six each, some of that funding could support a universal school lunch program. 

•	If you focused on academics instead, $1.5 trillion would rebuild 20,833 elementary schools and another 20,833 high schools using the New Philadelphia figures. Even reducing the number of elementary schools slightly would allow every high school in America to be rebuilt in a single year. 

•	If spent on hospitals, $1.5 trillion could build 789 facilities like the new Ohio State hospital. That’s significant considering there are currently about 6,000 hospitals in the U.S. If additional capacity isn’t needed, a single year of the military budget could cover more than 10 years of Medicaid cuts.
 
•	If invested in infrastructure, $1.5 trillion could fund a project 440 times larger than Ohio’s 2026 plan — repairing more than 325,000 bridges and 2,000,000 miles of highway. There are about 614,000 bridges and just over 4 million miles of public roads in the U.S., meaning roughly half could be repaired in a single year. 

•	Finally, $1.5 trillion could purchase 1,764,705 fire trucks. With fewer than 60,000 fire stations in the U.S., that would mean about 30 trucks per station — likely excessive. Some of that funding could instead go toward ambulances, FEMA, and broader emergency response needs.
 
A few notes in closing:
•	As mentioned earlier, I’m not an expert on national security threats. There are advisors and intelligence specialists far better equipped to assess risks from Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. If experts believe war is likely, then military spending — even at $1.5 trillion per year may be justified.
 
•	The examples above are intentionally all-or-nothing to help conceptualize a number as large as $1.5 trillion. The right answer likely lies somewhere in between: some investment in education, healthcare, infrastructure, and defense. We haven’t found that balance yet—and we likely can’t fund everything while also balancing the budget or reducing national debt. 

Finally, this blog examines national defense through the lens of a banker or economist. It focuses only on financial costs. War carries other costs that cannot be measured in dollars: the loss of young soldiers, the toll of suicide among service members, and the sacrifices families make during deployment. These are the most significant costs of all, and they cannot be captured on a spreadsheet. No one can put a price on the sacrifices made by those who serve in our nation’s defense.