That report was extremely vague and didn't actually say what was being spent on the troops, from the sounds of it they did what Ethereal said and took the entire cost of the war and just divided by deployed service member which definitely wouldn't be an accurate account of what is spent on a soldier. I can easily break down everything that was spent on me personally and every member of my unit during my 16 months in Afghanistan and 12 months in Iraq.
Flight to get there: A few hundred dollars maybe?
3 meals a day of chow hall food: (maybe)30 dollars a day x 365 = $10,950 (but even then you can't count food considered soldiers eat for free anyway whether deployed or not)
Utilities such as lights, water, etc.: Once again you can't count that because soldiers get free utilities anyway whether deployed or not.
All of our equipment such as gear, our rifle, body armor etc. is something we're issued when we first report to a unit, we bring the same said equipment with us to Iraq and Afghanistan so the only money being spent there is when equipment breaks, tears etc. (but once again it would still be spent on broken equipment even when not deployed)
So the only extra money I can think of is the extra $500 a month.
I can understand that a massive amount of money is being spent on construction, paying civilian contracts etc., but that actually created thousands of jobs (lots of regular joe blow average people are getting a decent check by going there and cooking food and constructing buildings)
Honestly the only large amounts of money that are being spent is on construction projects and paying all of the civilians.
The money isn't directly being spent on each and every single service member deployed, they're just using that as a broad general example.
