What Do The Navy's Ship-Launched Missiles Actually Cost

Ike's warning about the military industrial complex (MIC) evidently was not taken serious as stuff like this makes me worried and sick about America being able to fight a prolonged war. Million + dollar missiles to shoot down long range cheap drones does not seem to be very cost effective IMO.

Most of America’s warships set sail packed full of missiles. These include surface-to-air missiles to shoot down everything from drones to ballistic missiles, surface-to-surface missiles used to attack targets on land and sea, and even rocket-delivered torpedoes to defend against prowling submarines. These weapons can be depleted quickly during combat operations, as we have seen in and around the Red Sea recently. So, how much do each of those missiles really cost? We dug into the Pentagon’s budget documents to find out.

youtu.be...

a reply to: 727Sky

The bigger problem they face is all those VLS cells currently can not be reloaded at sea. So once they fire off their missiles they must return to port. In the case of a conflict with China that port isn't going to be anywhere close to the theater. So you will have ships traveling like a week or more in and out of theater for rearming.

a reply to: 727Sky

I earned my trade working for an air defence contractor, in Australia. One of the items that I worked on was a small square section piece of metal with a bevel taper on one end, and a tapped hole in it. We produced numerous of these and on the plans, we were instructed to hold tolerances 0.005" (inches, so we knew it for an American customer).

The plans only referred to a "Latch", and due to the high-tolerance, high-carbon-steel specified, the subsequent case-hardening and post hardening polishing, was quite an expensive item to produce.

I later found out that it was the latch that holds the plastic tray to the back of the seat in passenger aircraft.

It was a spectacularly bad waste of time and money, all hidden by commercial/military secrecy but it wasn't the only example of massive mis-spend that I encountered in that role.

a reply to: 727Sky

The cost of defending against drones will only advance weapon tech and also alow us to learn how to combat them on a much cheaper platform. I'm sure within a year all major power will have this problem solved.

originally posted by: RickyD
a reply to: 727Sky

The bigger problem they face is all those VLS cells currently can not be reloaded at sea. So once they fire off their missiles they must return to port. In the case of a conflict with China that port isn't going to be anywhere close to the theater. So you will have ships traveling like a week or more in and out of theater for rearming.

We have access to 9 bases and ports in the Philippines, it’s right there in the South China Sea. Our old navy port in Subic Bay on Luzon is still a operative port and very close to China. Fernando Maurcos Jr made a agreement with the US recently and we committed 80 million towards the bases. So, relations are good. I’m pretty sure they would reload in Subic, it’s only a little over two hundred miles from China.

a reply to: 727Sky

It doesn't matter the cost, it's war. Everything is fair in love and war.

Government spending in general isn't very efficient even for peace time spending.
Biden spoke about the Affordable Connectivity plan being refunded during his State of the Union address.
Over a million households in NYC alone are going to be charged late fees because Congress couldn't get the vote through before June.

gothamist.com...

Of course that is only if you have faith that the Democrats will eventually prevail.
I can understand why Mitch McConnell would not want the Rip and Replace bill to get bundled with ACP but paying late fees isn't a very smart use for taxes either.

Unfortunately many of these NYC customers are going to wait till they are so far delinquent in their billing they get disconnected..

It's all bureaucracy and overhead... Military contracts have their profit margins predefined before even the first design is put on paper. And those profit margins are in line with tech industry standards.

You can blame the MIC for convincing the government they need 100 missiles vs 10 missiles.

But the price of a single missile is all on the government. The government pays a lot to make sure the MIC isn't ripping off the taxpayer.

a reply to: 727Sky
These high cost are the reason I invest in defense companies like General Dynamics when there is a lot of shooting going on.