Does it make you mad that the average missile cost 150,000 dollars?

the cost of on missile is about 150,000$ and that's a basic missile on a jet, the more expensive ones can range up to 1.5 million each.

150,000 dollars to drop a missile killing a bunch of children and more than you probably make in 5 years, your tax dollars are being invested well.

 

I prefer a 2,750 lb. 16" naval gun projectile that only cost the taxpayers $500. Bigger explosive warhead than any other missile and more bang for the buck. A really big bang.

 

Try and analyze how the production costs of fighters has increased during the decades ... let's say from 1940 to 2015.

The cost of a Bell P-39 in early 40's was around 51,000 US$, a Grumman F6F-3 had a cost of about 35,000 US$.

The glorious and remarkable Lockheed P-38 Lightning recorded a cost of a bit less than 100,000 US$ per unit.

Today a common F15 costs not less than 28,000,000 US$ [like 280 Lockheed P-38 Lightning !!!!].

 

I only get mad when they miss.

But I certainly agree the costs can be ridiculously high, but then that's what the American public obviously wants, because they've done nothing about it for going on 6 decades now. They're busy sniveling about food stamps or something, or how 'gay marriage' is The Burning Issue We All Need to Address!, or some other pointless gibberish. Obviously the public is happy with the other issues.

 

You must be feeling happy today.

Last month for the first time a ship launched sub-sonic Navy Tomahawk cruise missile was able to hit a moving target ship at sea. But it didn't do it by itself, it took a little help from a FA-18 to get it to the target.

It's a start, maybe down the road we'll catch up with the Russian Navy that has supersonic (Mach 3) anti-ship cruise missiles that can change course in mid flight while skimming just above the sea surface.

http://news.usni.org/2015/02/09/vid...230369141&mc_cid=17f93f7232&mc_eid=2aedd16e3c

 

Well, adjusted for inflation, the P-38 would cost some $1mil. But then look at capabilities, how large is the gap between the P-38 and the F-15?

 

I sometimes get bothered by our overall level of military spending. However given the number of Americans you'd need to launch over 2000 missiles at $150k each in order for it to cost everyone a dollar on average. So that particular aspect of it doesn't bug me much. Considering the incredible costs associated with infantry I think our drone program is probably the most economical thing our military has done in our lifetimes.

It's a perfect plan, all we need is a way to get them to come out of the mountains for a nice beach vacation. Perhaps we could convince them they've won some sort of raffle?

They are quite different beasts on many levels. Our rifles are also vastly more expensive than bows.

That said, while I still think the drones are a good value compared to other options, I'm still surprised a Reaper costs quite so much ($16.9 million ). I mean it does have the ground station included in the cost but still.

 

Excessive technology. Just another example of how bad the government can be at efficiently allocating resources.

Another problem here is scale of production. Someone has to design and develop all these things. When the military only buys 2000 of them, each one is going to be expensive. The cost of development has to get allocated over each item. Imagine if they designed a completely new car, using non-standard parts, and they only made 2000 of them. Do you know what the price of each car would have to be for them to earn a profit?

 

Don't associated military equipment with hobby stuff. All these equipment require r&d which can be few engineer/scientists to thousands and millions man hr. A typical college grad from engineers earn $50k/year. Experience one $100 to $200k per year. A typical hourly charge from defense company for its employees labor is $100-500 per HOUR. A regular missile design require about few years and tens thousands man hr, that's just labor not include hardware/software/other purchases, then test for thousands man hr etc etc. so u do the math. Oh military grade stuff cost 10 time more than consumer stuff

 

1. Is like u said minimum collateral dmg
2 efficient and precise. Rather send in entire b52 bomb wing. One f18 with precision weapons will do the job. This also min our casualty if enemy has air defense

 

I agree, we should stop wasting money on precision strikes. Carpet bombing is far cheaper.

 

By the end of the Vietnam war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia - more than twice the amount of bombs dropped on
Europe and Asia in World War II. Historical validation that you can't always bomb your way to victory.


The current policy are unsustainable open ended wars.
A strategy that is sustainable and can be supported at home and abroad is the
strategy of containment. This is really just a follow up to a policy that was first enunciated in the Truman Doctrine.
It is a strategy that succeeded in winning the Cold War and can be applied to the
war against terrorism.

 

An hour operation of b52 is about $25-50k. Using dumb bomb for hitting enemy radar required an entire air wing. Fly from us to Iraq round trip is 23hr do the math it's 10 times more expensive than 1 f18 with 2 laser bomb

 

It's not the most right perspective. We should compare the two planes with reference to the anti air defenses they should face ... [this changes a lot the comparison].

An F-15 is a supersonic plane able to launch missiles, not only to drop bombs. But the anti air defenses it has to face is absolutely better than the AA guns the P-38 had to face ...

Considering the cost of AA systems of today, the stealth fighters are the only units which justify their cost ...

P.S. and if you pay attention at how military commands are literally terrorized about using modern fighters in war zones where AA systems are still functional you could realize that not stealth units cost too much.

 

Carpet bombing is also a very effective phycological weapon that completely demoralizes the enemy.

 

I was not being serious....

 

And nukes are infinitely better, cheaper too. Most conservatives have big time woodies to use them as well. However, they back off when they realize the inevitable escalation would quickly have us living in a world where fat people would be hunted down and eaten by mutants.

 

This is a reason for the new naval rail gun.

 

Sure they might cost $150,000 but a drone strike innocent wedding party is priceless.
Signed Obama

 

Until the enemy uses VHF radar, then stealth fighters are no better than the F-15.

 

Re costs, how many P-38's would a 1960's era Mig take out? Could P-38's track and take out a 1960's era bomber squadron? Another cost factor is survivability, after all. These are apples and oranges comparisons, really. These remind me of the old Saturday Night Live skit where Belushi and some others sat around and discussed the topic 'What if Napoleon had had B-52's at Waterloo?'

 

A nuclear blast only last for a second or so. Not the weapon of choice for "harassing fire." Neither are precision guided ordnance or $58,000 Hellfire missiles or $1 million dollar cruise missiles.

I think to many people today are stuck on the two low intensity wars that were fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and have completely forgotten what a high intensity war is like and what's required to fight them.

Harassing fire:

>" Harassing fire is a form of psychological warfare in which an enemy force is subjected to random, unpredictable and intermittent small-arms or artillery fire over an extended period of time (usually at night and times of low conflict intensity) in an effort to undermine morale, increase the enemy's stress levels and deny them the opportunity for sleep, rest and resupply. This lowers the enemy's overall readiness and fighting ability, acting as a force multiplier for the harassing force.


As the name suggests, harassing fire is undertaken as an extreme form of nuisance without a major effort to produce significant casualties or to support a larger attack. The intent is to merely ensure the enemy can never fully rest or attend to non-combat related tasks and must always be alert and in cover from incoming fire. For this reason, harassing fire is often conducted at night (or around the clock if resources allow) and by a small number of guns or artillery pieces rather than the whole contingent. The denial of sleep and constant alert state it induces is physically and psychologically unsustainable by infantry forces for any length of time, and eventually causes severe degenerative stress and degradation of the force's combat abilities. For this reason, it has been a standard and efficacious tactic used since the introduction of the projectile weapon."< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassing_fire

 

Interesting observation, the matter is quite sensitive to discuss on the net, anyway I've found a good article explaining how this kind of radar can detect a stealth [with some troubles, lack of accuracy and limitation in distance, in fact only the last VHF radars are said to be engagement radars, able to guide a missiles on the target, so far it takes patient, several attempts and to switch on / off the device not to be detected by support electronic warfare units].

The article talks also about the F117 which had hit over Yugoslavia.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/the-f-35-vs-the-vhf-threat/

 

The Tesla is a perfect example. Number produced is small (keeping an artificial demand), the price per unit is insane.

One of the reasons the military buys limited numbers is that these items have a lifepan. Generally on the order of 10-15 years. Then they have to have them taken apart and re-evaluated to see if they can still work, destroyed if they can not, or often with obsolete items they use them in tests.

At White Sands they test on average 20-200 PATRIOT missiles a year. For the most part they use PAC-2 missiles (1995-2000) which are considered "obsolete", replaced with the more capable GEM series of missiles. But for testing guidance and system integration the PAC-2 is perfectly fine for this purpose. And it lets the crews use and test a $1 million missile that otherwise would simply be destroyed otherwise.

Well said. In fact, "smart bombs" typically use less explosives because they are more precise.

Your typical "dumb iron" bomb for a is the 500 pound bomb. Generally dozens of these are dropped on a target in a shotgun effect, each one containing around 200 pounds of explosives.



There goes almost 5 tons of explosives, we see in the picture 9,600 pounds of explosives, 12 tons of actual ordinance.

Then you have your PGMs. They are smaller because less explosives are needed, they are very precise. The Hellfire missile only has 18-20 pounds of explosives in a 100 pound weapon. You can make 10 of them out of the explosives in a single "dumb bomb".

Of course, some of the newest generations use no explosives at all. For hard targets kinetic kill is often the best solution.