Day 11: 16 Iranian Minelayers Sunk, a Submarine Killed by Hellfire, and Trump Says There's 'Practically Nothing Left to Target'

Day 11 of Operation Epic Fury produced two confirmed kills, one Congressional briefing that should have caused a national reckoning, and a signal from the President that even he may be running out of things to blow up.

Sixteen Minelayers Gone

CENTCOM confirmed that US forces destroyed 16 Iranian minelaying vessels operating near the Strait of Hormuz. The strike package cost an estimated $32 million. Iran had been deploying the vessels to seed the Strait with naval mines — the same waterway through which one-fifth of the world's traded oil normally flows, and which has been functionally closed since this war began.

This brings the total Iranian naval vessels destroyed past 50. The Pentagon declared Iran's navy "combat ineffective" on Day 10. Iran apparently didn't get the memo.

A Submarine Dies by Hellfire

CENTCOM released video footage confirming that a Ghadir-class midget submarine was struck and destroyed by an AGM-114 Hellfire missile. The Ghadir is a shallow-water submarine designed precisely for operating in the tight, constrained waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Unit cost of the Hellfire: roughly $115,000. Cost to Iran: one of the few remaining cards it held in the Strait.

The Hellfire was originally designed to kill tanks. It is now killing submarines. The Pentagon released the footage, which means this was considered a messaging moment as much as a military one.

The $11.3 Billion Briefing

Around this time, the Pentagon delivered a classified cost briefing to Congress: the first six days of Operation Epic Fury alone cost $11.3 billion. Six days. $11.3 billion.

That $11.3 billion figure covers munitions, operations, personnel, equipment losses, and interceptors through just the opening week. It does not include the economic damage rippling through global oil markets, the cost to allied nations, or the long-term veterans care bill for the 140 Americans already wounded in this conflict.

Phase Shift: The War Gets Cheaper — and More Precise

Day 10 marked a quiet transition in the operational tempo. What the military calls the "sustained operations" phase — the opening barrage of Tomahawks, B-2 strikes, and mass munitions expenditure at roughly $175 million per day — gave way to what planners call the "air dominance / ISR-heavy" phase.

The new daily burn rate: $95 to $175 million, with a midpoint around $125 million. The tempo drops, the precision increases, and the targets shift from massed military infrastructure to command-and-control, communications, and anything that moves in the Strait of Hormuz. The 16 minelayers and the Ghadir submarine are textbook examples of this phase's targeting logic.

Cheaper per day does not mean the war is winding down. It means the US has run out of large fixed targets to bomb and is now hunting.

Trump Floats an Exit

President Trump, in public remarks, suggested there is "practically nothing left to target" in Iran. For a president who opened this conflict saying the US would "obliterate" Iran's military capacity, it reads as an early signal of an off-ramp being tested in public.

Iran has a new supreme leader — Mojtaba Khamenei, appointed in the days after his father was killed on Day 1. A new supreme leader who has not publicly accepted defeat. An economy under siege but not collapsed. A navy that keeps sending vessels into the Strait despite losing 50-plus ships. And a missile and drone program that, while degraded, has not been eliminated.

Practically nothing left to target is a strange way to describe a war that is still costing $125 million a day and has killed 1,332 Iranian civilians.

The Human Ledger at Day 11

Seven Americans dead. A hundred and forty more wounded. 1,332 Iranian civilians killed — people who posed no threat to anyone in the United States. A new supreme leader in Tehran who watched his father die in the opening minutes of this war. And a president signaling he might be looking for a door marked "exit."

The Strait of Hormuz — the reason the Pentagon says it's here, the waterway it claims to be protecting — remains choked. Oil remains near $120 a barrel. The global economy continues to absorb the shock. And the meter keeps running at $125 million a day while diplomats haven't formally met.

Track the cost in real time at PayForWar.com.