[JoeAltmaier]

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.

[pmorici]

"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.

[mcphage]

> Its dirt cheap at the cost, considering the price of a tank.

And the price of an infantryman.

[skywhopper]

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.

[PavlovsCat]

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.

[JoeAltmaier]

In a better world we'd not need weapons. But give these guys a break: this weapon is essentially all about the cost-cutting. It replaces million-dollar missiles, which are definitely single-use. It doesn't need resupplying with powder - it makes its own propellant (electricity). Each round takes around 1 cu ft, so a single ship can carry hundreds/thousands instead of a dozen.

This is you tax dollars at work, cutting costs for everybody.

[PavlovsCat]

That at best makes this the exception to the rule, and is a drop in the ocean. Yeah, it saves money. Kinda like cleaning a needle makes it more safer to inject heroin you found on someone who died of bad heroin. Technically, this is true, if you accept a few premises I personally don't buy into.

Do you really think this changed:

The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business - ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed. -- Colonel James G. Burton

And it also doesn't change the fact that how much value something destroys doesn't increase the value of it. If anything, it's how much value it protects that does. There's generally tax payers and demagogues on both sides, fucking their own populations much harder than their "enemies", and the more value gets destroyed in that process, the sadder the outcome for humanity. Exactly because it's all mostly a racket, such a mythos of heroism and adoring the technical excellency of it has been created, and because it's so shameful, people defend it so pettily, and uselessly. Like I would care about downvotes when speaking my conscience.