The United States makes large amounts of money from the war in Gaza because Israel uses thousands of bombs to attack Palestinian positions every day and most of Tel Aviv’s arms purchases come from the United States. And American ammunition is very expensive.
Since October 7, the Israeli military has carried out more than 4,300 strikes in the Gaza Strip.
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights said Israel dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip, equivalent to the power of two nuclear bombs.
In other words, an average of 1,086 tons of explosives are dropped on the Gaza Strip every day, Al Jazeera reports.
Most of the heavy bombs dropped on the Gaza Strip belong to the US-made MK-80 family. This type of ammunition has been in use by the US military since the Vietnam War and was widely used during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The MK-80s were originally created as free-fall bombs and were then modernized into “smart bombs”.
These bombs are of different types and calibers: 120 kg, 250 kg, 500 kg and 1000 kg.
A bomb weighing 1,000 kg costs the US Army 16,000 dollars per unit, and is sold to allied countries for about 25,000 dollars.
The United States plans to supply Israel with equipment worth $320 million that turns unguided aerial munitions into “smart bombs,” writes the New York Times.
The Israeli army also has American-made GBU-28 bombs. The GBU-28 weighs 2,100 kilograms and contains high explosive material. It is designed to destroy established underground targets. It is not known how many of these bombs Israel has, but the price of each such bomb is about 300 thousand dollars.
Shares of America’s biggest arms companies have soared amid the war in the Gaza Strip. Lockheed Martin, a large American military-industrial corporation, recorded a significant increase in the price of its shares – from 0.85 percent (October 6) to 8.93 percent (October 9), which was not recorded since March 2020.
Share prices of RTKS Corporation and “Northrop Grumman” increased from 0.56 percent and 0.75 percent to 4.62 percent and 11.4 percent in the same period.
“General Dynamics” shares recorded the highest growth on October 9. Their cost has increased by almost 10 percent.
The growth in the revenue of US arms companies is directly related to the increased demand for weapons by Israel. Tel Aviv says it has used more than ten thousand bombs and missiles in the Gaza Strip, which means it will have to significantly strengthen its military capabilities.
American arms companies are the main beneficiaries of the conflict in the Middle East, as they are the largest arms exporters to Israel. More than 70 percent of Tel Aviv’s defense procurement comes from the United States. This is evidenced by the increased income of major American arms suppliers since the beginning of the war.
As for Israeli arms companies, they are now experiencing a “golden age”. Israel’s military-industrial complex is operating at full capacity and non-stop. Hundreds of machine guns are delivered daily to the IDF, reservists and civilians, according to the Israeli publication “Kalkalist”.
