Which part specifically? Darpa toying with ACTUV expliclity because it was _dirt_ cheap vs relying on large surface combatants + air for ASW - small hulls with

Which part specifically? Darpa toying with ACTUV expliclity because it was _dirt_ cheap vs relying on large surface combatants + air for ASW - small hulls with 10-20k per day operating cost vs 500k-800k per day ASW destroyer (US costs). It would be cheap to build out a fleet of ~50 small autonomous / minimally manned surface/subsurface fleet to follow the handful of SSNs on deployment at any given time. 30-80 ACTUV for surface ASW (US costs) is already 5-10 shadowing each deterrent patrol SSN. Economy of scale enters picture even if nuclear powered - danger is mostly political, parking reactors in adversaries EEZs. PLA relative cost vs USN acquiring/maintaining SSNs likely much cheaper / lopsided. Look at PRC's 80 type 22s that existed basically on the hope that it can deter the 1-2 carriers US normally throws in theatre. As for mobile TEL / mobile land triad, like 30k+ HEMTT+LVSR has been built, and that's just Oshkosh Defense building tactical trucks. # of USD 300-500k heavy/tactical trucks globally in 100,000s. Add in land infra/tunnel/harden costs and you won't get close to 100m per shot. Can probably get Oshkosh to hammer out budget decoy TELs with autonomous driving without any of the the expensive TEL/launch hardware. Say what you will about US industry, US auto still pretty capable of building things that roll on wheels vs US ship building. SSNX is projected to be 5-7B per unit (200m+ per launch tube), that buys you a lot of road mobile launchers. E: USN plants to acquire like 30 of them. I would be very surprised PLAN needs to spend 150-200B on a ASW UAV fleet to counter that. That's ~400-600 054s frigates. An ACTUV drone would cost fraction of manned frigates. I think you're dramatically underestimating just how expensive US SSN force is / will projected to be and how economics will incentivize scope of counters.