alt Hacker News> US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.
50000 * 10000 * 12 is 6B/year. I was surprised, but I suppose that passes the smell test for a ~1T/year defense budget.
> US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.
50000 * 10000 * 12 is 6B/year. I was surprised, but I suppose that passes the smell test for a ~1T/year defense budget.
Now imagine for the same $10k cost making a cruise missile, instead. This is close to what a Shahed is -- the estimate is $20k-$50k / unit, so close enough.
This is bonkers. Countries can now afford for the same cost * to make not a 10-20 mile range artillery shell, but a 1500 mile effective range cruise missile.
* Defense costs are "fake" to a large degree. A lot of that is really corruption with money flowing from the taxpayers to the arms manufacturers, but still if we go by the numbers...