Cost of war through the history of warfare

Abstract

Since early development stages of the human civilization there has been a clear tendency of a constant increase in the production costs of weapons of war, along with the rapid growth of their various types. This resulted in a drastic increase in the costs of war in general. In particular, significant increase of the cost of war occurred during World War I. Compared to the wars of the early 18th century, the costs of war at the beginning of the 20th century, i.e. in only 200 years, had increased by more than three thousand times. Such costs could hardly be afforded even by the most powerful industrialized countries of the world. These costs were dramatically increased during World War II by about 5.5 times. The indirect economic costs, which increased by more than 10 times, should also be added. Completely new types of weapons appeared, which were more complex and significantly more expensive. At the beginning of the third millennium, countries continue to spend enormous amounts of money on weapons, most notably Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Russia, USA, France, Great Britain, and Japan.

Keywords

• costs of war
• increase of the cost of war
• new types of weapons
• armament