Do they hit their targets? Eventually with enough of them it’s not super important but… it does matter a bit.

Loughla 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

According to the Google search I just did, an average American hypersonic missile costs between 13 and 41 million dollars.

So that is between 131 and 410 of these. At that rate, and with enough disdain for my enemy and apathy for their people, I can just launch a shit load of them in the right direction and cross my fingers.

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serf 20 hours ago | parent [-]

the concept of 'The average hypersonic..' makes me laugh.

in actuality the concept of equating real life dollars to defense budgets makes me laugh, too. It's not really a money thing, it's a production thing; and even if it were to be considered as a money thing the values involved in no way reflect a real life value.

It's like the NASA hammer story/packard commission. They're not going to say no to a 435 dollar hammer versus a zillion dollar project, but it's not actually a 435 dollar hammer.. .

Similarly a 41 million dollar weapon only costs that much until a wartime powers clause forfeits your factory to state production..

	▲	m000 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Similarly a 41 million dollar weapon only costs that much until a wartime powers clause forfeits your factory to state production. I seriously doubt such clauses still exist today. The entrenchment of the MIC in the US political structure is so deep and stretches for so long, that they have probably managed to avoid having such clauses by now. After all, that's their obligation to their shareholders. Also, the more high-tech the weapon, the more complex and fragile are its supply chain logistcs. So, scaling up the production of high-tech weapons is much harder, especially in wartime.

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supermdguy 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Nobody knows yet the true capabilities of the missile, but it doesn’t matter. The accuracy doesn’t matter very much, the payload doesn’t matter very much. If it’s launched at a certain target in Tel Aviv, it still is going to hit something in Tel Aviv. The Israelis have no choice but to attempt an intercept, and will spend millions to do so

Sounds like the massive price disparity more than makes up for any accuracy issues

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bluGill 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

iron dome is about $100k to intercept according to wikipedia. Millions is off by an order of magnatude. I suspect they can make it cheaper with scale as well.

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bigyabai 19 hours ago | parent [-]

$100k is the cost of the low-speed ~mach 2.2 Tamir interceptor, which is effective against shells and rockets but not going to intercept a maneuvering mach 7 glide body.

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XorNot 19 hours ago | parent [-]

There is absolutely no way anyone is producing a manoeuvring mach 7 missile for $100,000 though.

The term "hypersonic" is incredibly overloaded.

	▲	bigyabai 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, I agree with that. I've not seen a booster stack at that price hit mach 4-5 reliably, mach 7 would be unprecedented. Still important to clarify that HGVs are intended to defeat these cheaper intercept layers.

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irishcoffee 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Clearly accuracy does matter. I just tried to throw a rock from my back yard to Tel Aviv, I missed terribly.

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FpUser 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>"Do they hit their targets?"

Are you sure you want to find out?