A Brief History
On April 6, 2017, President Trump ordered an attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria. The 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles sent by the US impacted early on April 7th and killed about 16 Syrian troops while destroying between 9 and 20 aircraft and a SAM missile battery.
Digging Deeper
Those cruise missiles cost a cool $2 million apiece to deliver 1,000 pounds of explosives as far as 2,500 km away. Modern weapons are not cheap, and even private citizens are aghast at the cost of rifle and pistol ammo at their local sporting goods stores. Some weapons’ prices include:
A hand grenade, $45.
An M-4 standard rifle is $700.
Military rifle rounds cost from just over a dime to $2.50 apiece.
The Javelin anti-tank missile system is $178,000, with replacement missiles $78,000 each.
A single USMC F-35 fighter jet is $109 million, while the total program costs $1.7 trillion!
Note: Civilian market cost for typical defensive handgun ammunition is around $1 to $2 per round and hunting type rifle ammo is a similar price. Cheap target ammo will cost less, and specialty ammunition will cost more. Civilian versions of AR-15 pattern rifles cost as little as $500 or upwards of $3000 and semi-automatic civilian versions of AK-47 type rifles cost a similar amount.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Mintz, Alex. The Political Economy of Military Spending in the United States. Routledge, 2002.
Younossi, Obaid. Is Weapon System Cost Growth Increasing?: A Quantitative Assessment of Completed and Ongoing Programs. Rand Corporation, 2007.
The featured image in this article, missiles being launched from USS Porter, is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain in the United States.
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