Why do cruise missiles cost 2 million each or however much it is?

Technology has advanced to the point that a smartphone (iphone 4, android pones etc) has all the inputs needed to guide an aircraft to a point at low altitude and fairly terrain-hugging, and impact it into a specified point with high accuracy.

All that remains is the programming knowledge to design the guidance program to run on the phone, and the engineering / diy ability and aerodynamic knowledge to turn a small cheap mass produced engine (say an offroad motorcycle engine) and some wood beams and sheeting, into an airframe, capable of carrying a few hundred kg of explosive.

All for under 5K each.

Because the arms manufacturers want 2 million, so they get it.

What are you, a commie?

:shortbus: athead2: :givecookie:

if his bus were any shorter, it'd be a yellow rollerskate.

I love this emoticon.

He's kinda got a point... does it really take that much computational power to hug the ground at low altitudes? I mean, yes, there are issues with the chips in phones not having military tolerances to heat, vibration, and EMP, but those only double or triple the cost of low-complexity DIPPs... Even at 10x for the heat and vibration resistance for a CPU, and then enclose the board in a Faraday cage, it shouldn't cost as much as it does.

Gee, you make it sound like someone could produce a Tomahawk in their garage over a long weekend.

Let me suggest a few things to you:

Even the latest Tomahawks don't rely solely on GPS-guidance. GPS can be jammed in the vicinity of a target. A Tomahawk uses a combination of inertial guidance and terrain recognition to find its way to a target. Not sure you'll find that ap at the iStore.

An offroad motorcycle engine? Are you kidding? Are you going to put a propeller on the thing? You want it to take 10 hours to reach the target? Better use a turbofan.

Either way, remember to have a fuel tank sufficient for your cruise missile to have a 1300 mile range.

A Tomahawk carries around half a ton. Your propeller-driven, plywood-constructed cruise missile is going to need some big wings to lift that kind of load. You probably should investigate putting together a metallic airframe, one that keeps the interior of the missile well insulated from the environment.

A Tomahawk can be launched from a ship, dropped from a bomber, or fired from a torpedo tube. I'm not sure your prop-driven, balsa wood cruise missile will handle those regimes. Oh, yes...make sure your airframe is strong enough to handle the firing shock.

Your cruise missile will also need the capability and certification to carry a nuclear warhead.

Finally, while you're puttering around the garage building this thing, remember to meet all the military requirements for procurement, documentation, manufacturing, qualification, test, and certification.

Good luck coming anywhere close at $5K a copy.

2 million is high, but I think that there are a lot of issues that legitimately impact pricing for this versus consumer devices:

1. Defense contractors have to maintain security clearances, secure infrastructures, etc. None of that is cheap, so it adds to the cost of doing business. I'm not sure how much it adds.
2. These things aren't just hardened against heat, they're hardened against EMP's. Further, their shelf life is a lot longer than a consumer device.
3. There is price gouging in the good years to make up for the bad years.
4. Fuel considerations. Fuel must have a long, long shelf life.
5. Finally, the companies making these must pay all of their employees, and then generate a profit.

Anybody else?

Some of it is the FUBAR that is military procurement. Some of it is also based on the much higher tolerances needed as well. Additionally, while your cell phone may be able to find the location, it cannot get there on it's own, make adjustments in route, travel hundreds on MPH and carry an explosive warhead. All of these things add significantly to the price tag.

The optimal strategy for any producer is to maximize profit, not to minimize the price. Add to that the fact that the only customer (or the few customers, depending on the product) don't buy those missiles with their own money, but with other people's money, so it's not like they're having a strong intrinsic motivation to bring down the price.

IIRC, when cruise missiles were introduced in the late 1970s, they cost about $800,000 each.

So adjusted for inflation, they haven't risen in price significantly.

So you're saying that if I want to protect my money... cruise missiles aren't a great hedge against inflation?

I was wondering more along the lines of why we're firing two-million-dollar-a-shot weapons without a declared war.

I don't have a problem with paying two mil for a self-piloted jet plane that delivers a thousand pounds of HE within a few meters of a target. What I have a problem with is a government that goes through those things like popcorn.

Every one of those birds is the equivalent of several people's life savings. Maybe we should think of them as such before we start using them to bombard anyone who isn't an immediate threat.

Cost per unit is approx $1.5 million just so we have the facts.

I wasn't suggesting that the prop driven wooden version would be anything a military would ever field.

I meant it's something even a civilian could come up with reasonably cheaply that would still perform the function of delivering a destructive explosive load to a target accurately. It would be tremendously crude, but it would be a cruise missile.

That's right - they use cell phone towers, which is why we were so focused on helping the Libyans keeping their network up.

But shouldn't the price go down after a while, barring artificial price inflation?

In order to save some cash you could always convert old submarines in to massive, fuck off cruise missiles.

Are you seriously suggesting government weapons systems are anything resembling a free market?

I'm suggesting that, all things being equal, the government should be interested in getting a good deal from it's suppliers. It's not the responsibility of the taxpayers to help corporations inflate their profit margins.

Duh, but what incentive do they have to do that?

More money freed up to fund jello wrestling in Antarctica?


That, or an increased ability to wage war due to the reduced cost.

Has the price of cars of similar size and engines gone down overall?

Nobody declares war anymore.

IIRC, there have been exactly TWO wars fought in the entire world since 1945 that were "declared".

The Six Day War & the Yom Kippur War.

Declarations of war are a historical anachronism.

Every new generation of cars comes with new bells and whistles and safety features that justify the cost, at least in the eyes of the consumer.

Are cruise missiles constantly being updated in a similar fashion? That might justify the cost, but I don't see that argument being made.

That presumes that the procurement is the means, rather than the end. Look at how many Congresscritters are in bed with defense contractors (sometimes literally - DiFi, for instance). War is a racket.

Yes they are. The Tomahawk's today are very different from those in the 80's. They update the missiles with regularity.

Just as an example, the ones fired during GWI were terrain mapping while modern versions are GPS based.

IIRC, the Tomahawk cruise missiles used in the 1991 Gulf War....the MAJORITY did not even hit their targets.

Not true today of course.

They'd save some money if they made them out of submarine torpedoes.

Really?

Then why are so many defense contractors no longer around?

No McDonnell Douglas. No Rockwell International.

To name just a couple.