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The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability. These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

piva00 3mo ago
> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA I think it's even worse, it's funded a lot more by debt than excessive taxes, taxation in the USA is not even that excessive (to its own detriment since the budget is never balanced).
- scns 3mo ago
  > since the budget is never balanced When the Republicans rule.
  - strictnein 3mo ago
    The last balanced budget was in 2001 and it was passed by a Republican controlled House and Senate [0]. Clinton somehow gets complete credit for it, even though the executive branch doesn't directly control the budget and congress controls the power of the purse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/106th_United_States_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/106th_United_States_Congress
- wafflemaker 3mo ago
  It's kind of funded by the demand for dollars due to whole world needing dollars to trade with them. So that it's not the USA and Americans paying all that interest in inflation due to money printing
hvb2 3mo ago
> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA Not excessive taxes, a political choice to spend a lot of the revenue on defense. And anyone who wants to reduce military spending will get asked: "Don't you support our troops?" And that'll be the end of that
- pjc50 3mo ago
  And let's not forget: the voters back them on this.
  - Matl 3mo ago
    From what I know, the 'defense' industry has their production cleverly across all 50 states so that they're seen as one of the few sources of stable employment for most, sadly.
    - rtkwe 3mo ago
      It's not actually that many people in the grand scheme at ~1.1 million according to the CRS, but it is spread out very effectively so that massive cuts can be directly felt by any chosen House representative or senator. It's partially a capacity preservation system as well, for defense a nation wants to be able to produce a significant portion of it's military hardware needs in a war domestically and you need to keep those industries alive somehow against cheaper foreign producers so you have the Berry Amendment that requires clothing etc purchased by the DoD to only use US made materials.
- dribbiy8 3mo ago
  [dead]
- herry6 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- mountainb 3mo ago
  Taxes in the US go to a cluster of major items. Medicare, other medical, Social Security, interest, VA benefits and veteran's medical care, federal spending on the indigent or disabled, and Defense. Those together are 94% of annual federal spending. None of that spending is subject to that much debate; all the remaining "debate" is over the remaining 6%. I don't think defense is really as discretionary as it seems. A lot of it is effectively bribing and menacing trading partners to keep trading with the US on favorable terms through cash transfers, provision of military equipment, training, and mutual defense pacts among other diplomatic agreements. Japan didn't just decide on its own free will to become a pacifist country dedicated to exporting cheap, high-quality manufactured goods to the United States. General MacArthur did that.
ryandvm 3mo ago
The purpose of a system is what it does. It costs $30M/unit because our trillion dollar defense budget is mostly just a jobs program (25%) and wealth transfer apparatus (75%). Killing people is just a side effect.
- Matl 3mo ago
  > Killing people is just a side effect That budget and wealth transfer requires the US Dollar to remain the world's reserve currency. A lot of the killing has to do with ensuring it remains that way.
BariumBlue 3mo ago
An MQ-9 has roughly the same wingspan as an A-10 - they're not small birds. An MQ-9 needs to have a good sensor ball, ideally with both color and IR, gps jamming resistance, weapons integration with multiple types of missiles (ideally large enough to take out something larger than a motorcycle), good on-target time INCLUDING transit time (if it can only stare for one hour on target it'd be pointless), good uplink and downlink to reliably move that data (you don't want to lose track when a missile flies off), and the architecture to support, including ground control stations. You CAN stuff someone in Cessna, give em a camera, a radio, and some mortar rounds to toss out the back, but that's not going to work for most use cases.
- RugnirViking 3mo ago
  between these extremes there are, parent posits, some efficiencies to be had. Do you agree that its at least possible to get a cheaper solution thats 90% of the way there? Ukraine seems to do pretty well for themselves on this front, and several other countries around the world are no slouches either. Even iran themselves do quite well. Sure their drones dont have the fanciest optics or whatever, but when looking at a cost per millitary effectiveness standpoint, are five redundant drones with worse optics better than one big one? what about five hundred vs one? five thousand? The same logic goes for most of the components.
  - ponector 3mo ago
    >> are five redundant drones with worse optics better than one big one Depends on the goal. If the goal is to make high precision strikes - one big drone with tons of capabilities. If the goal is the terror strike campaign like russian - cheap Shahed drones are the best.
- myrmidon 3mo ago
  The modern (UA) take is to strap the warhead directly on the thing, make it just as big as needed and directly fly everything into the target. If you insist on firing guided missiles at ground targets from a drone that returns to base you're never gonna be able to compete on cost.
paytonjjones 3mo ago
Correct, now let's also talk about US government-funded [research, healthcare, education, construction, foreign aid, intelligence, infrastructure, entitlements] Except almost everyone has their pet topic where they'll defend any amount of spending.
newaccount670 3mo ago
If you think you can produce them for cheaper, you could make yourself a lot of money and save taxpayers a lot of money by starting your own company.
- bluegatty 3mo ago
  This statement implies a misrepresentation of how these kinds of supply chains work. These are captured markets, there is no competition. The bar is set high, or specifically, so that small players cannot compete, and this is done by extensiive relationship management at all levels, and heavy marketing. It takes a situation like Ukraine to 'prove' to everyone that 'cheap things can work well'. Even in the face of glaring evidence form Ukraine the system is slow to react. Shaheds are used for years and the US just let their gear sit out in the open in the Gulf. You could provide 'irrefutable evidence' to a political system of some fact, it's not hugely helpful. The system does not change until the power dynamics do - aka Iran destroyed gazillions in US gear and some senior level people are 'demanding answers'. Defence contracts are an 'inside game' it's extremely political. Only when people are in a rush do they start to look at outside agencies to find the best gear for the problem they need to solve 'right now'.
  - wafflemaker 3mo ago
    >It takes a situation like Ukraine to 'prove' to everyone that 'cheap things can work well'. It's likely not even that. According to Jacek Bartosiak, Polish geopolitics popularisator, it came by a kind of blind "luck". He travels a lot to Ukraine and talks a lot with military and dual use manufacturers. Regular arms manufacturing in Ukraine was, just like anywhere else, not very innovative and dominated by big actors that could make sure nobody else can enter the market. But the drones were not seen by them as anything serious, and due to dire needs the market has been deregulated, which allowed many small businesses to flourish and develop the fantastic industry that Ukraine is so proud of now. But that came mostly because the big fish let the small underdogs on the market because they thought there is no market. Hope I'm not mixing anything up.
- cricketsandmops 3mo ago

piva00 3mo ago

> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA I think it's even worse, it's funded a lot more by debt than excessive taxes, taxation in the USA is not even that excessive (to its own detriment since the budget is never balanced).

scns 3mo ago
> since the budget is never balanced When the Republicans rule.
- strictnein 3mo ago
  The last balanced budget was in 2001 and it was passed by a Republican controlled House and Senate [0]. Clinton somehow gets complete credit for it, even though the executive branch doesn't directly control the budget and congress controls the power of the purse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/106th_United_States_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/106th_United_States_Congress
wafflemaker 3mo ago
It's kind of funded by the demand for dollars due to whole world needing dollars to trade with them. So that it's not the USA and Americans paying all that interest in inflation due to money printing

hvb2 3mo ago

> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA Not excessive taxes, a political choice to spend a lot of the revenue on defense. And anyone who wants to reduce military spending will get asked: "Don't you support our troops?" And that'll be the end of that

pjc50 3mo ago
And let's not forget: the voters back them on this.
- Matl 3mo ago
  From what I know, the 'defense' industry has their production cleverly across all 50 states so that they're seen as one of the few sources of stable employment for most, sadly.
  - rtkwe 3mo ago
    It's not actually that many people in the grand scheme at ~1.1 million according to the CRS, but it is spread out very effectively so that massive cuts can be directly felt by any chosen House representative or senator. It's partially a capacity preservation system as well, for defense a nation wants to be able to produce a significant portion of it's military hardware needs in a war domestically and you need to keep those industries alive somehow against cheaper foreign producers so you have the Berry Amendment that requires clothing etc purchased by the DoD to only use US made materials.
dribbiy8 3mo ago
[dead]
herry6 3mo ago
[flagged]
mountainb 3mo ago
Taxes in the US go to a cluster of major items. Medicare, other medical, Social Security, interest, VA benefits and veteran's medical care, federal spending on the indigent or disabled, and Defense. Those together are 94% of annual federal spending. None of that spending is subject to that much debate; all the remaining "debate" is over the remaining 6%. I don't think defense is really as discretionary as it seems. A lot of it is effectively bribing and menacing trading partners to keep trading with the US on favorable terms through cash transfers, provision of military equipment, training, and mutual defense pacts among other diplomatic agreements. Japan didn't just decide on its own free will to become a pacifist country dedicated to exporting cheap, high-quality manufactured goods to the United States. General MacArthur did that.

ryandvm 3mo ago

The purpose of a system is what it does. It costs $30M/unit because our trillion dollar defense budget is mostly just a jobs program (25%) and wealth transfer apparatus (75%). Killing people is just a side effect.

Matl 3mo ago
> Killing people is just a side effect That budget and wealth transfer requires the US Dollar to remain the world's reserve currency. A lot of the killing has to do with ensuring it remains that way.

BariumBlue 3mo ago

An MQ-9 has roughly the same wingspan as an A-10 - they're not small birds. An MQ-9 needs to have a good sensor ball, ideally with both color and IR, gps jamming resistance, weapons integration with multiple types of missiles (ideally large enough to take out something larger than a motorcycle), good on-target time INCLUDING transit time (if it can only stare for one hour on target it'd be pointless), good uplink and downlink to reliably move that data (you don't want to lose track when a missile flies off), and the architecture to support, including ground control stations. You CAN stuff someone in Cessna, give em a camera, a radio, and some mortar rounds to toss out the back, but that's not going to work for most use cases.

RugnirViking 3mo ago
between these extremes there are, parent posits, some efficiencies to be had. Do you agree that its at least possible to get a cheaper solution thats 90% of the way there? Ukraine seems to do pretty well for themselves on this front, and several other countries around the world are no slouches either. Even iran themselves do quite well. Sure their drones dont have the fanciest optics or whatever, but when looking at a cost per millitary effectiveness standpoint, are five redundant drones with worse optics better than one big one? what about five hundred vs one? five thousand? The same logic goes for most of the components.
- ponector 3mo ago
  >> are five redundant drones with worse optics better than one big one Depends on the goal. If the goal is to make high precision strikes - one big drone with tons of capabilities. If the goal is the terror strike campaign like russian - cheap Shahed drones are the best.
myrmidon 3mo ago
The modern (UA) take is to strap the warhead directly on the thing, make it just as big as needed and directly fly everything into the target. If you insist on firing guided missiles at ground targets from a drone that returns to base you're never gonna be able to compete on cost.

paytonjjones 3mo ago

Correct, now let's also talk about US government-funded [research, healthcare, education, construction, foreign aid, intelligence, infrastructure, entitlements] Except almost everyone has their pet topic where they'll defend any amount of spending.

newaccount670 3mo ago

If you think you can produce them for cheaper, you could make yourself a lot of money and save taxpayers a lot of money by starting your own company.

bluegatty 3mo ago
This statement implies a misrepresentation of how these kinds of supply chains work. These are captured markets, there is no competition. The bar is set high, or specifically, so that small players cannot compete, and this is done by extensiive relationship management at all levels, and heavy marketing. It takes a situation like Ukraine to 'prove' to everyone that 'cheap things can work well'. Even in the face of glaring evidence form Ukraine the system is slow to react. Shaheds are used for years and the US just let their gear sit out in the open in the Gulf. You could provide 'irrefutable evidence' to a political system of some fact, it's not hugely helpful. The system does not change until the power dynamics do - aka Iran destroyed gazillions in US gear and some senior level people are 'demanding answers'. Defence contracts are an 'inside game' it's extremely political. Only when people are in a rush do they start to look at outside agencies to find the best gear for the problem they need to solve 'right now'.
- wafflemaker 3mo ago
  >It takes a situation like Ukraine to 'prove' to everyone that 'cheap things can work well'. It's likely not even that. According to Jacek Bartosiak, Polish geopolitics popularisator, it came by a kind of blind "luck". He travels a lot to Ukraine and talks a lot with military and dual use manufacturers. Regular arms manufacturing in Ukraine was, just like anywhere else, not very innovative and dominated by big actors that could make sure nobody else can enter the market. But the drones were not seen by them as anything serious, and due to dire needs the market has been deregulated, which allowed many small businesses to flourish and develop the fantastic industry that Ukraine is so proud of now. But that came mostly because the big fish let the small underdogs on the market because they thought there is no market. Hope I'm not mixing anything up.
cricketsandmops 3mo ago