Oh definitely, but then everything is these days in those areas. An Abrams costs $9 million and that is 40 year old tech! Kinda expected the price to be sky high on something bleeding edge like the F-35...
I always thought it was grimly amusing that in both Gulf Wars the UK and USA were firing missiles that cost way more than the tanks they were blowing up.
In $/kg, the Abrams is in the same ballpark as a new car. I think the problem is that were spending a lot on people who don't work on the product: the lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, C-Levels, HR, middle management, etc.. Decades of cost-plus contracting taking its toll. I remember reading somewhere that the CIWS/FN F2000 cost something like $135,000 each. For what reduces to a rifle duck-taped to a shotgun. A shotgun that can drop a grenade into a pop bottle 400m away though, so there's that.
I'm not saying it's bad, but it does seem way overpriced.
Oh definitely, but then everything is these days in those areas. An Abrams costs $9 million and that is 40 year old tech! Kinda expected the price to be sky high on something bleeding edge like the F-35...
I always thought it was grimly amusing that in both Gulf Wars the UK and USA were firing missiles that cost way more than the tanks they were blowing up.
In $/kg, the Abrams is in the same ballpark as a new car. I think the problem is that were spending a lot on people who don't work on the product: the lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, C-Levels, HR, middle management, etc.. Decades of cost-plus contracting taking its toll. I remember reading somewhere that the CIWS/FN F2000 cost something like $135,000 each. For what reduces to a rifle duck-taped to a shotgun. A shotgun that can drop a grenade into a pop bottle 400m away though, so there's that.