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Additionally, the cost of launching a cruise missile can add significantly to the overall cost of the system. Finally, the financial impact of cruise missile technology should be taken into account when considering its use, as it carries both potential benefits and risks. The cost of cruise missiles varies widely depending on the specific type and model. For example, the US Navy’s Tomahawk Block IV ALCM has an estimated unit cost of $1.41 million, while the Russian Kh-101 air-launched cruise missile has an estimated unit cost of $3 million. The Raytheon Tomahawk SLCM has an estimated unit cost of $2.9 million, while the Lockheed Martin AGM-158 JASSM-ER LACM has an estimated unit cost of $2.5 million. Besides costs, the study also finds that there are operational obstacles to cruise missile defense of the homeland — such as the difficulty of rapidly distinguishing between incoming missiles and civilian aircraft.
AGM-86 ALCM
A June 2023 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) highlights Russia’s resilience in missile production despite sanctions and export controls. Another Gray Wolf achievement that Engdahl identified involved UAI compatibility and the implications for rapid, low cost integration of weapon systems onto platforms. Gray Wolf is designed to meet key USAF open system design requirements, such as Weapon Open System Architecture (WOSA) and the Universal Armament Interface (UAI). Engdahl described WOSA as an open-architecture specification that must be met by any new weapon systems entering the Air Force inventory.
Examples of Different Cruise Missile Costs
A 3.2Mt payload would cost $837 billion for initial destruction and burn treatments. A 18Mt payload would cost over $1.1 trillion for initial destruction and burn treatments. Costs for rebuilding would be significant for complete reconstruction, estimated to be as high as $12.6 trillion if hit by a missile with an 18Mt payload, based on the HE rebuilding costs. The cost of a cruise missile depends on a variety of factors, including the type of missile, its size, range, and the materials used in its construction. Prices can range from a few hundred thousand dollars for smaller models to over $10 million for larger, more advanced models.
Defense Department Successfully Transitions New Technology to Programs of Record
The small jet-powered drone aircraft had a simple inertial navigation system (INS) that allowed it to fly a pre-programmed course that would make it visible to known Soviet defensive sites. A number of radar jammers and radar reflectors were intended to make it appear like a B-52 on a radar display. The purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth analysis of cruise missile costs.
Everything To Know About Tomahawk Missiles: Speed, Cost, And Destructive Power - SlashGear
Everything To Know About Tomahawk Missiles: Speed, Cost, And Destructive Power.
Posted: Thu, 18 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Hypersonic
A nuclear missile with a 4km initial blast radius would require a yield of 18Mt, 3Mt larger than the largest US bomb tested, the “Castle Bravo”. Buildings would collapse up to a 12km radius with thermal radiation causing 3rd degree burns extending to a 36.8km radius from the initial point of detonation. A nuclear missile with a 2km initial blast radius would require a yield of 3.2Mt, the same yield as China’s Dong Feng-ICBM. Buildings would collapse up to a 6.76km radius with thermal radiation causing 3rd degree burns extending to a 17.7km radius from the initial point of detonation. A decision not to defend international shipping from Houthi attacks could call into question the U.S. desire or capability to defend freedom of navigation more broadly. The utility of air and missile defense, however, is clearly profound in today’s threat environment.
Range and power
In the final operational demonstration in 2020, multiple cruise missiles were pneumatically launched in a matter of minutes. The swarm of LCCM vehicles then dynamically reacted to a prioritized threat environment while conducting collaborative target identification and allocation along with synchronized attacks. The LCCM project also enabled significant improvement in understanding the relationship between communications and autonomy in collaborative vehicles. At the same time, the study also raises questions about whether adversaries would chose expensive land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs) rather than cheaper alternatives (such as existing ballistic missiles) to strike US territory. Thus, US “decisionmakers would need to consider whether the cost of a wide-area cruise missile defense was proportionate to the overall risk posed by LACM,” CBO says. The United States Air Force (USAF) deploys an air-launched cruise missile, the AGM-86 ALCM.
Not everything is going to be hypersonic or even supersonic, nor does it have to be, he argued, but the cost per salvo make it attractive as part of a varied and complex threat to present an adversary. The missile has been able to stay at the $1 million price range, which is on the low end for missiles. Raytheon’s supersonic SM-6 can reach speeds of Mach 3.5 – with future iterations believed to be capable of reaching hypersonic speeds – but cost more than four times as much per shot and have less range. That’s the Tomahawk’s key differentiator, said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst with Telemus Group. Raytheon’s Tomahawk Block V, when fully realized in its Block Va and Block Vb varieties, will be expected to hit surface ships at Tomahawk ranges – in excess of 1,000 miles – with the integration of a new seeker.
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In the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev headed the GIRD-06 cruise missile project from 1932 to 1939, which used a rocket-powered boost-glide bomb design. The 06/III (RP-216) and 06/IV (RP-212) contained gyroscopic guidance systems.[5] The vehicle was designed to boost to 28 km altitude and glide a distance of 280 km, but test flights in 1934 and 1936 only reached an altitude of 500 meters. Biological agent payloads are one of the four that can be applied to missile warheads. Many agent types are not conducive for missile payloads due to the heat and kinetic motion from travelling and the final explosion, however there are a limited amount that are extremely heat stable and therefore have been historically tested as missile armaments.
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The study did not, however, “consider infrared sensors or new types of weapons such as lasers or other directed-energy weapons because those systems will probably have ranges that are too short for wide-area CMD,” CBO caveats. According to budget data from the United States Marine Corps from 2022, each Tomahawk costs around $2 million. As of now, the United States and the United Kingdom are the only countries to deploy Tomahawk missiles, although Australia and Japan have put out bids to purchase Tomahawks. “Between Tomahawk Block V, the SM-6 and the NSM, the Navy has a collection of attack weapons that they are happy with,” he said, adding that a long-running effort to develop a next-generation land-attack weapon has lost some of its urgency. Tom Karako, an expert in missile technology with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that cost is a big advantage of Tomahawk, especially for low-end missions.
(See ACT, September 2016.) Both the new and previous estimates include the impact of inflation. The medical costs for the immediate and evacuation ranges would be extremely large, with high loss of life that continuously increases closer to missile’s point of impact. With evaporation taking days, and under cold environments it can take months, widespread medical decontamination would be necessary along with relocation for people in the affected area which would be a substantial cost. 600L of a liquid agent would be an approximate payload for a SRBM, with a 130m initial impact contamination range and droplet spread increasing to 540m. This type of payload can also be used in an airburst form to spread for longer distances at a greater height, with an initial impact contamination range of 400m and droplet spread increasing to 1500m. The measurements compared in the graph above are yields needed to double the initial fireball blast radius each time.
Meanwhile, the Air Force had also issued a requirement for a version with a much longer 1,500 nautical miles (2,800 km; 1,700 mi) range. This would allow the bombers to launch their missiles from far off the Russian coast, placing it outside the range of the interceptors as well. To reach the intended range, this new Extended Range Version (ERV) would have to be lengthened to contain more fuel, or external fuel tanks would have to be added. Either change would make it too large to fit on the SRAM launchers and the extended-fuselage version would be too large to fit in the bomb bay of the new B-1 Lancer bomber. The Air Force intended to replace the original ALCM with the new version at some future date. Looking for another solution to the Soviet SAM problem, in 1964 the Air Force began developing a new system that would directly attack the missile sites rather than confuse them.
The Pentagon’s fiscal 2022 budget requests full funding for the military’s nuclear modernization priorities, including $609 million for the LRSO program. That money ensures efforts like LRSO, the B-21 bomber and the Columbia-class submarine proceed, even as the department studies whether to make changes to the nuclear enterprise. The service on July 1 awarded Raytheon a cost-plus-fixed-fee deal for the engineering and manufacturing development stage of the LRSO program, with contract options that max out at about $2 billion. The Tomahawk missile itself is a 20.3 foot long craft with a wingspan of eight and a half feet, and it weighs 3,330 pounds with all of its components.
India is currently developing hypersonic BRAHMOS-II which is going to be the fastest cruise missile. These missiles are about the same size and weight and fly at similar speeds to the above category. The latest projection does not include the upgraded warhead for the missile, dubbed the W80-4, which is expected to cost an additional $11 billion. The updated cost projection is an increase of 30–50 percent from the Air Force’s earlier estimate of $10.8 billion for the program, known as the long-range standoff (LRSO) weapon, in 2016.
In 2017, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin each received a contract worth about $900 million for the 54-month technology maturation and risk reduction phase of the LRSO program. At the time, the service planned to downselect to a single vendor in FY22 during the EMD period. During the program’s EMD stage, Raytheon will continue maturing its LRSO design and prepare for full-rate production of the weapon in 2027, the contract announcement stated. The Coyote Block III air vehicle is the baseline for numerous follow-on activities and programs within the Navy, Air Force, and Army. The jam-resistant datalink also transitioned to the Golden Horde program, along with several spiral development programs. While the weapon software load failed, the flight demonstration of CSDB marks “an important step on the path to Networked Collaborative Weapon systems,” Chris Ristich, director of AFRL’s Transformational Capabilities Office (TCO), said in a statement.
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