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Cheap missiles

by David••17

 

We touched on this the other day – the Navy is doing yeoman’s work protecting the ships off Yemen from Houthi-launched Iranian (oh, that’s right, they deny any complicity) Houthi missiles. Damn fine work, but it is expensive. The missiles and drones they fire cost  $50 grand, the missiles we fire back – well, add a few zeroes. Plus they take a while to build.  Now, in Ukraine they are shooting down the same sort of drones, but with missiles that cost about $20 grand. ‘Way better cost ratio there!

The average cost of an Iranian-built Shahed-136 kamikaze drone is $50,000. A Standard Missile-2 surface-to-air missile, used by U.S. Navy destroyers for missile and anti-drone defense, meanwhile, costs $2.1 million — 42 times as much.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in mathematics to realize the economics of war here favors the party launching drones over the one buying missiles to shoot them down.

Especially when the missiles are one-time use – $2.1 mil each time.  But then in Ukraine:

In a report last week, the X social media account OSINTtechnical published video of a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile team using L3Harris’ Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE) launcher, which includes thermal sensors, to shoot down a Russian Shahed drone with an advanced precision kill weapons system (APKWS) rocket manufactured by BAE Systems.

Each Vampire costs $2.85 million. But this launcher is reusable. The total Vampire-plus-APKWS cost would reach parity with the cost of a Shahed after just 100 missiles launched. And a Vampire-plus-APKWS combination would be cheaper than a Standard Missile after just two launches.
That’s an enemy’s nightmare – that their weaponry can not only be neutralized, but by someone spending even less than them to do it, especially by something light and compact enough to mount on a pickup.  Right now we are on the wrong side of the financial ratio – they shoot, we kill it, and we lose two million bucks when we do. But if killing their $50K missile costs us a net of $22K more or less…hmmm. Now you’re talkin’!
And now they’ve proven effective in an active combat environment — and not just against drones. Media reports earlier this year showed a ship-mounted VAMPIRE shooting down a Russian cruise missile at sea.  Motley Fool
The original article is an investing column, so unless you are looking for someplace to invest your shekels much of the column may be irrelevant. But from our viewpoint – if it helps us win at a fraction of the cost, seems to me the Military Industrial Complex is doing at least something right.

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17 thoughts on “Cheap missiles”

  1. Let’s not forget that the US has the world’s premier fighting force that specializes in excess spending to achieve minimum results. Several studies suggest that the US spent 250,000 to 300,000 small arms rounds to kill each insurgent in Iraq. While these numbers included training they just look at ammunition and not the whole picture.

    Most studies suggest we spent around $8,000,000,000,000 in Iraq after the invasion and killed around 30,000 insurgents. This works out to about $267,000,000 for each insurgent killed. War is definitely the racket to end all rackets.

    1. In WW2, The average number of rounds of all calibers fired was in the 20K to 40k range.

      Alot of suppressing fire and recon by fire was used.

    1. Those police officers sure are guilty and this report shows it. Guilty of doing their job that is!

    2. Little Timmy says he strongly disagrees with Trump giving a non-existent pardon to the lead officer. He invented the pardon to stir up racial tensions and has had kind of a multiple personality disorder moments lately arguing it out with himself. He is the bestest white savior ever.

    3. Are you saying George Floyd died of multiple drug toxicities? Well, that’s just your racist opinion, man! St.Floyd of Fentanyl was a victim of the white police patriarchy and died for the sins of the white man! You ain’t woke!

  5. Quitcherbitching about what things cost that break our enemies’ sh*t! Them bonuses to the Board of Directors of The MIC don’t come cheap. How dahell do you think those retired Flag Ossifers are gonna feed their families? Think of the children!

      1. Need I add he is making peace with a billion brown people. This is ‘orrobble! We are morally superior! This must treat transgender people like the gender they say they are and give tampons to their boys!

  6. Curious as to how much Charlie spent on each rocket.
    They usually walked them across the target in vollies of 3 so
    you could almost guess where the next one was gonna hit.
    Lots of damage for cheap money I’ll bet. Dirty money too.

  7. Damn. The Ukrainians are now using vampires to fight Russia?
    What’s next? Werewolves?

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