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OMG "The Pentagon’s FY2022 budget request for hypersonic research is $3.8 billion"

• credit_guy 5y ago
  Is this a lot? Missiles are quite expensive in general. $3.8 BN is not the budget for this single program, but for several, 8 per this source [1] (although, now it might be 1 or 2 less). For this particular weapon, a somewhat similar weapon I can think of is the European Meteor [2], which is ramjet (rather than scramjet) powered, and reaches Mach 4, rather than over Mach 5 as this one is supposed to do. Meteor comes at a cool cost of EUR 2 MM per piece. Think about it, you fire one missile like that, and it's like destroying 10 Ferraris. [1] https://www.flightglobal.com/flight-international/8-key-hypersonic-missile-efforts-for-the-us-department-of-defense/138052.article https://www.flightglobal.com/flight-international/8-key-hype... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(missile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(missile)
  • R0b0t1 5y ago
    > it's like destroying 10 Ferraris. But, like, really cool.
  • nielsbot 5y ago
    Just saying that's a lot of money in absolute terms. I'd hope that money could be spent in other ways.