A single-use anti-tank weapon costs $50,000, and worth every penny if you're the infantryman and the tank is heading toward you. Its dirt cheap at the cost, considering the price of a tank.
Same for the railgun. They are shooting at million-dollar targets.
"worth every penny if you're the infantryman and the tank is heading toward you"
To bad it isn't cheaper we could give every infantryman two! In all seriousness though if you are an infantryman in a Malaria infested swamp anti-malarial drugs are worth every penny too but the production of those are subject to competition so luckily they only cost pennies a pill and every soldier can have as many as needed. The missile's value to a soldier is not a justification for it's cost and if anything the high cost of something like that is detrimental because if it really is that great it means that not everyone can have one.
The question is... how much does the railgun itself cost per shot? $25,000 per round is cheap enough, but what's the impact of each firing on the gun?
Missles and shells are expensive mostly because they have to propel themselves, but they benefit from the fact that that propulsion system only has to work one time. A useful railgun will need to be able to fire thousands of times without major maintenance before you'll start seeing any cost benefit to cheap ammunition.
Increasing the costs for other tax payers does not make it cheaper though. Furthermore, the weapons cost the same wether they are fired at an approaching tank, into the air, at a bunch of baby seals, or not ever. It's not like weapon peddlers buy back the unused stuff at full price, do they.
When they said that my immediate thought was, yeah a US missile costs millions but is that is representative of the cost of production of a Chinese missile? America's enemies don't buy their missiles from American defense contractors. They already produce electronics a good deal cheaper than the US and that isn't even considering the beltway bandit markup.
Also all the comments saying that this is cheap compared to some other US weapon that is probably similarly overpriced are just silly. These sorts of things are not subject to the kind of competition that normal goods are. Just look at the cost of space flight for companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic compared to NASA's which relied on defense contractors until SpaceX came along.
Because you are. I'm with PavlovsCat -- the relative price comparison is being used to sell extraordinary profits, and otherwise smart people just eat it up.
Considering that the rail gun projectile is basically a hunk of metal, $25k does seem really expensive. No gunpowder, nothing. All the work is in the railgun.
The projectile is a marvel of materials engineering. It has to accelerate to Mach 7 in a few feet, survive friction with the surrounding air for 100 miles, and have enough remaining core to deliver sufficient kinetic energy to be worthwhile.
Its definitely not just a chunk of barstock milled to a point.
This is the more interesting question to me, not "is it cheap in comparison to what it's targeting or the alternatives" but "is it cheap based on the cost of production".
25k for a hunk of metal does seem like a very strange price, perhaps there's something more exotic to it than meets the eye?
JoeAltmaier|12 years ago
Same for the railgun. They are shooting at million-dollar targets.
pmorici|12 years ago
To bad it isn't cheaper we could give every infantryman two! In all seriousness though if you are an infantryman in a Malaria infested swamp anti-malarial drugs are worth every penny too but the production of those are subject to competition so luckily they only cost pennies a pill and every soldier can have as many as needed. The missile's value to a soldier is not a justification for it's cost and if anything the high cost of something like that is detrimental because if it really is that great it means that not everyone can have one.
mcphage|12 years ago
And the price of an infantryman.
skywhopper|12 years ago
Missles and shells are expensive mostly because they have to propel themselves, but they benefit from the fact that that propulsion system only has to work one time. A useful railgun will need to be able to fire thousands of times without major maintenance before you'll start seeing any cost benefit to cheap ammunition.
PavlovsCat|12 years ago
pmorici|12 years ago
Also all the comments saying that this is cheap compared to some other US weapon that is probably similarly overpriced are just silly. These sorts of things are not subject to the kind of competition that normal goods are. Just look at the cost of space flight for companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic compared to NASA's which relied on defense contractors until SpaceX came along.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/27/us-turkey-china-de...
aet|12 years ago
mkr-hn|12 years ago
PavlovsCat|12 years ago
allworknoplay|12 years ago
lmg643|12 years ago
JoeAltmaier|12 years ago
Its definitely not just a chunk of barstock milled to a point.
etherael|12 years ago
25k for a hunk of metal does seem like a very strange price, perhaps there's something more exotic to it than meets the eye?
chao-|12 years ago
Expenses for Exploration and Production (i.e. upstream oil & gas) operate on similar orders of magnitude.
Qworg|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
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loceng|12 years ago