What Do The Navy's Ship-Launched Missiles Actually Cost?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- Most of America’s warships set sail packed full of missiles. These include surface-to-air missiles to shoot down everything from drones to ballistic missiles, surface-to-surface missiles used to attack targets on land and sea, and even rocket-delivered torpedoes to defend against prowling submarines. These weapons can be depleted quickly during combat operations, as we have seen in and around the Red Sea recently. So, how much do each of those missiles really cost? We dug into the Pentagon’s budget documents to find out.
Check out our original post on the cost of these missiles at www.twz.com/38...
Video courtesy of RTX
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:29 Surface-to-Air Missiles
5:15 Surface-to-Surface Missiles
7:06 What's the Total Cost?
Short, sweet and informative. Perfection.
Thank you!
A real youtube video on TWZ channel and not just stock footage for embedding? Nice!
Just in case you missed it: th-cam.com/video/0j7Z7Qnu7no/w-d-xo.html
Really good video. Sometimes I just don't have time to read some of the articles on TWZ and get carried away following the hyperlinks :) so this format works nicely. Hope the channel grows
Thanks for the love...we know some people learn better by reading, and some by watching...so best to present the info in as many ways as we can!
7:21 If you think the $420 *million* cost of firing an Arleigh Burke's missiles is bad, wait till you find out how *LONG* it would take to *manufacture, deliver, and reload the 133 replacement missiles.*
Spoiler alert
only a few hours
The USN has 3 pools
operational
reserve
warstock
if they built as needed , the USN would not be able to function
Missiles are built with shelf life as well the ability to be maintained in storage
The only item is that is takes hours to reload the VLS missile by missile which is why the DDG-X is being designed with swappable VLS modules so the entire module can be pulled out and replaced with fresh
That will reduce arm times substantially
@@verdebusterAP From DefenseNews: "Raytheon stopped its SM-2 production line after delivering fiscal 2017 orders to American and foreign customers." In a real war with a peer adversary, our missiles will be depleted at a rate many, many times at which we could ever produce them. Only 12K were ever produced for the whole planet. Newer SM-6 production is *slow*.
@@verdebusterAP That is a LOT of gloss you got there fella. VLS are not currently resuppliable ***at sea***. Each tube takes hours when in port at dock.
The 800 Tomahawks expended on the ***first*** day of war in the middle east would ***currently*** take over a decade to replenish. Things are doable. There is not need to soft-soap the issue or you just sound like you are whistling past the graveyard.
GOOD ships. GOOD missiles. The depth of magazine is the issue and "command" at the general staff level (***all*** pentagon drones) seems pleasantly oblivious and wants to "divest to improve" ***prior*** to fixing any current unit or ammo supply issues. The capability of the U.S. to produce 155mm artillery rounds is "expected to increase" to 90,000 rounds per month.... ***maybe*** starting in 2025. That is triple current resupply levels. ALL missile systems are on a similar "multi-year/multi-decade" rebuild/resupply track.
Javelins, Sea-Sparrows, Sidewinders etc etc etc. If it has a rocket motor is is build only a handful at a time currently and the "spooling up" effort looks rather anemic if we ever get near a shooting war.
@@phlogistanjones2722
How about wrong on all counts
VLS can be resupplied at sea however only in absolute emergency with the current equipment.
Secondly 800 TLAM were expended but you are forgetting key part
The TLAM has been in production since 1983. Estimates were at least 4000 missiles produced by 2004 of newer Tactical Tomahawk with earlier models either expended or retired The buy for block V is 845 missile and the MST just 42 for now. The low numbers is because the USN is mulling over the LRASM and JASSM-B2 for the VLS
LRASM has been tested but naval variant of JASSM-B2 would be cheaper as the USAF and other countries are invested both missiles as well push with hypersonic weapons
Great video. Please keep up the quality of your production and info.
We'll keep bringing it every video, don't worry!
Great addition to your content, thanks. How fast can they reload while underway? Or should we assume directed energy weapons will resolve that?
As of now, they cant. www.twz.com/sea/eying-china-threat-congress-pushes-navy-on-at-sea-rearming
We need more boats instead.. loading underway is pointless during war they will be damaged to some extent anyway and need to come home.
First time seeing this channel.
Subscribing now.
Thanks for the sub and happy to have you aboard!
@@thewarzone You're welcome. I am a big fan of the website. I read the articles daily.
really like the new direction of this channel
Thanks!
A lot of the cost comes from the low rate of production of our missiles. We don't take advantage of economies of scale and then use high prices as an excuse not to build more missiles
That's likely in the process of changing thanks to 🇷🇺 & 🇨🇳.
Again very good content! Really love it! 🎉😊
Thank you! Glad you are enjoying what we're putting up!
I very much doubt that the SM-2 block IIIC is "the most common throughout the US Navy", given that it's still in low-rate initial production (LRIP) as you claim at 2:40. It may be the most common in this year's procurement, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the inventory of IIIBs.
Look who we have here straight from twz?
"I'm your host "Mack" Machowicz, and on this episode of Future Weapons we'll be taking a look at the missiles arming the US Navy."
what a throw back
Excellent. It would be nice if we could develop some lower cost yet effective options, especially for ship and land attack.
Cost is irrevelant when you consider the lost of an asset
The problem with the Red Sea is that US isnt bringing the hammer down on Yemen
Excellent comment!
It's evidently effective against those low cost not so sophisticated drones! A round cost soo much
Nice vid, great information, but please lose the background music :)
Awesome video
Thanks! A bit different from last week.
Did they bring back the gryphon (BGM-109g) and I didn't know? that the Tomahawk is, again, a surface to surface missile?
The BGM-109G, which was a development of the Tomahawk was taken out of service in the early 90s. Tomahawks have been used in a surface-to-surface role going all the way back to Desert Storm. The Navy even fired some via attack submarine during the Gulf War.
Tomahawk and SM-6 have a land based weapon system called Typhon.
Why is RAM an odd number?
Just how the launcher size worked out with SeaRAM dimensions.
the more we make the cheaper they get - i mean a lot cheaper.. and with the huge influx of new $ coming for munitions, for at sea replenishment, and for more hulls.. that 23 Million $ SM3 Blk 2A will come way way down in price.. also you forgot to include the PAC-3 MSE - we know that's going to fill many a mark 41 launch tube in the coming years.. prep for 2027! can you also imagine how much great data we got from the Ukraine War, the Houthi protection, and then the Israel attack? even if only 2 out of 7 SM3's hit their targets they will be tuned in for 100% kill mode after that.
LRASM-VL hasn't hit the fleet yet?
ESSM block 2 supposedly has a 50 mile range.
Always wonder how Tyler's voice sounds like 😊
Is that Tyler?
That's not Tyler, actually....you'll have to keep guessing who it really is. :D
@@thewarzone Bob?
Joseph trevithick i think 😊@thewarzone
Nearly half a billion to outfit one ship for one sortie. No wonder the Navy wants lasers
Lasers have limited applications though. You have to let a threat get quite close to you before using it. Not a replacement for medium-long range effectors and even close range to some degree. Then there are the atmospheric limitations. Post on lasers and the realities surrounding them going up today.
Cost is just part of the problem. We don't have an endless stockpile of these missiles. Even a minor peer war would exhaust our supply and replacements would take several years.
@@skenzyme81 thats what you get with a tiny defnese budget (most of our $$ goes to stuff like pensions, bases, salaries, etc. etc.) purchasing power is way down within the USA. cut entitlements, cut dumb spending like the 7 trillion over the last 4 years and then increase taxes - and double the defense budget.
It's unlikely they would expend all those missiles in a sortie. Even one where it was actively shooting / being shot at. That is the upper bound of the cost to outfit the missiles, not the typical per-sortie cost. (It would be interesting if TWZ could figure out what the costs might be say in the Houthi and Iran missile defense cases ended up being.)
@@shannonkohl68 If an AB Destroyer were actually attempting to expend all of its ordnance, most of it would even be launched. It would end up on the bottom of the sea with the rest of the destroyer. 😳
Thats why China is out pacing US! they can build ships, missiles and other military weapon cheaply and faster! yes US made is much better but we saw in the war in Ukraine that even cheap drones can inflict damage and change the war! so in short Cheap Chinese missiles can be a huge problem to US, because every missile countered by US may cost less than the cost of the US made SM3, PAC3, SM6, so in long term US is losing! US must find ways to lessen missile cost, or forever lose to its enemy in terms of production and quantity!
Agreed
420!😢
A million for a RAM? Ouch... I know it sets a bad precedent... But could the U.S. consider just doing some of their classic CIA shenanigans and just bribe the Houthis to stop trying to blow everyone's shit up? Youve got to imagine that 420 million could buy a whole lot of "please quietly f*** right off, Uncle Sam needs a nap"
Full load. 420. .... Nice.... :)
Oh wait.. that is hundreds of millions of Freedom Bucks just for ammo..... ***sigh*** Uncle Sam surely is ***NOT*** a cheap date.
Peaceful Skies
It's all mark_ up. 2000$ a missile.. Tesla can build them for pennies on the dollar..you can buy better missiles from Russia S400. On and unemployment check😂😂😂
In case you didn't understand what Eisenhower was talking about when he said to beware of the military industrial complex, this is it.
While the DoD acquisition and contracting processes might be able to be improved, war is expensive. Doing war well is REALLY expensive. And doing war where you can shoot down an ICBM in space, well...that's another level entirely.
@@thewarzone War is also PROFITABLE
@@845835Hello, American-foreign-adversary troll-bot. You must be referring to all the interest from investors in the MIC? Or you would be, if there weren't so little such interest, because the profit margins in Defense industry is decidedly poor. Take Boeing, for instance. Know many happy investors in Boeing lately? No, because it's so easy, and at no fault if their own, for Defense firms to shit the bed, and Boeing has REALLY shit the bed. Not to mention that even the largest defense firm in the world (Lockheed) is MANY orders of magnitude smaller and less profitable than any one of the dozen top US tech companies just on the west coast alone.
Defense is not a big moneymaker, as the margins are razor thin. Hence, defense is not where investors looking to make a profit put their money. They only put any money there for the sake of stability & the relative safety of a critical sector, in exchange for rather low, and sometimes no, payout.
So, why might you be referring to such incredibly expensive endeavors which yield such terribly poor profit margins as if they were huge money makers? Well, perhaps your a short-seller, which would make sense if, again, defense were truly profitable & so highly sought as to occasionally run hot & overvalued. Thing is, it never is either of those, and such an investment strategy would utterly bankrupt a short-seller with such speed & at such a mind-boggling rate that it would be simply silly.
Perhaps, then, you're looking for a way to reduce your adversary's capacities & capabilities on the cheap because you either can't match them, would do any & all you can to turn popular opinion of your adversary's populace against their MIC so as to reduce their investments therein and make the fight less difficult for you, or both. And since a smart investor does not bet the farm on wagers with such little chance of such low payouts as the MIC to be interested in taking on such risk or in shorting their stocks, the good money is on you attempting to combat your adversary through irregular means (i.e., hoping 3 likes on a YT video will lead to enough public pressure to make a country which has been beset by adversaries of its own, like you, which it has had to actively fight in shooting wars for 3-quarters of its existence, suddenly decide to stop funding its own defense).
Good luck. You'll need it.
@845835 So is peacetime if you're a good salesman. They sure made a lot sellin nuclear weapons despite them not being used in combat for nearly 80 years.
@J-bv1uz That's the very purpose of nuclear weapons. If we were all conventional weapon super powers instead of wipe each other off the planet kind of enemies we would have already experienced multiple world wars. Remind me how long it was from the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII, 21 years?
I bet you it doesnt cost as much to make. It's just 90% mark up by the manufacturer 😡😡
wow so impressive. the houthis are seriously intimidated