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Silicon Valley getting back to its roots: the Y Combinator cruise missile
(www.ycombinator.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
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10x smaller doesn't mean 10x cheaper when things you're cutting corners on are warhead and rocket engine that is cheapest components per gram that also make the entire thing work. just to begin, 3M price per pop is the price that saudis paid for 650 SLAM-ER AShMs, along with training and limited tech support, and foreign sales are always fleecing customers like this. for domestic customer, price is half million apiece
citation needed
Harpoon AShM warhead is something like 200kg, and for a very good reason. sinking ships is much harder than destroying land vehicles, and they want to sink something with 20kg warhead? that's a bit spicier than heavy ATGMs like Stugna-P. if that thing is enough to one-hit a ship then so is 127mm naval artillery shell (what they're going to war against, jetskis?). for comparison, it took something like 5 drone boat hits (200kg warhead each) to sink sergey kotov, 1400-ish ton patrol boat in black sea fleet. they want to sink similar sized targets with 20kg warhead missiles, i doubt crew would even notice in some cases
that immediately means they have to compete with a naval gun at ranges less than 40km, and they will lose. also such small ship probably isn't that much of a threat at distance
with anything big enough to get notice of airforce there's quicksink, that is JDAM kit modified to dive under ship in question and break its keel. with one-ton warhead it costs something like 120k, and it's already tested and will be ready much faster than whatever they're cooking. they're simply noticed that chinese navy is stocking up anti-ship missiles and want to get on the hype train. or maybe they're copying ukrainians? neptune has 150kg warhead and various drone boats carry even bigger load (200-850kg and maybe more than that)
and this is before going into the actual reason why american weapons are so expensive. this is: auditing every subcontractor to keep paper trail for every component and to make sure that it's not manufactured by the most probable adversary; personnel has to have access to classified information; then there's hardening against many things that can happen in the battlefield, including being handled by marines; and keeping things up to spec which includes detailed quality control. none of these things are hallmark of hype-based sv startups
Wait, what else is there in a missile though? I'm obviously a complete ignorant in this space but in my head a missile is the thing that goes boom (warhead), the thing that goes vroom (engine), electronics, and the packaging. I'm assuming the packaging is also not the main cost here since "smaller doesn't mean cheaper", sooo, what, are the electronics that expensive?
@V0ldek You missed maintenance and logistics. Military gear is typically amortized over a 30 year period, so a £3M missile might actually cost something like £0.3M to build then a bit under £100K per year to keep in working order (new batteries and motors, regular inspections and refurb, cost of the leak-proof warehouse it's stored in, etc).
@cstross @V0ldek New motors? Cruise missiles use turbofans, just like planes, unlike rockets. So they don't get old fast, probably last 30 years just fine.
And, well, just build them in Ukraine, and shoot them the day they are made...
Setting up the infrastructure for that manufacturing is expensive and complicated, requiring supply chains and skilled workers. Even ignoring the risks of disruption by hostile action that's a lot of infrastructure and industrial capacity to build up in an active war zone, and from the western perspective it's better long-term to have that extra manufacturing capacity locally, to say nothing of being easier to sell to politicians and voters.
@YourNetworkIsHaunted Ukraine is building its missiles well enough even now, it has expertise, skilled workers, etc. Ever heard of Mriya, Antonov, etc?
Also, ironically, it was a major supplier of the Russian Air Forces, and it maintained Russian rockets until recently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov
it gets expensive because things that modern ashm has to do can get pretty complex. it can go like this: lauch from tube, pop wings open, start jet engine, get to cruise speed and maintain altitude 2m above water. then get to area guided by gps, but you can't just rely on gps only. then get up, start scanning what's forward with its own radar, when target is found dive to it. or fire up additional terminal rocket engine to get to mach 2 or whatever to make intercept harder (that's what one chinese missile does). or launch 7 or so, get them all to communicate, one flies high above and uses its own radar to find targets and guide the rest of missiles. that one up is visible to radars (above radar horizon) so it can get shot down, but that's no problem because if that happens another missile gets up and does the same thing (that's a soviet ashm, can't remember which one). or missile can stay down and communicate with friendly AWACS or nearby F-35 or something to guide it. there are more options
explosive is something like 20$/kg, rocket propellant (if used) would be somewhere in the same ballpark. it's cruise missile so another big cost will be small jet engine, electronics are a bulk of the cost, yeah. electronics are also what is responsible for bunch of new capabilities. new seekers? TERCOM (not on sea but yknow), maybe datalink? camera to feed image back to operator? good inertial guidance can get pricey. harden it all against jamming and EMP, keep all pieces non-chinese and assembled in usa, keep paper trail and things get expensive. and it all needs software too, and software has to be kept classified, so all devs have to have clearance
for 155mm artillery shell something like third of the cost is fuze, with second most expensive component being casing (30kg-ish piece of steel rather precisely machined on lathe and heat treated in specific way)
paper trail is a real issue. there was a huge noise few months ago about some small part of a pump (a gasket or something) from honeywell that went into F-35, that was found out to be made in china. they had to find alternatives asap
especially in case of antiship missiles (and bunker busters) casing is single piece (or few-piece, welded) of forged low alloy steel that weights a fuckton and has to be reasonably strong. it's not just a particularly violent crafts class project that is bits of steel held up by epoxy, like what you can get away with in anti-air missile
javelin atgm is like quarter million dollars, and the only thing it has is IR seeker + inertial guidance. it also doesn't keep actual software onboard until launched
I just love how the writing style is rationalist with one weird trick
This comment inspired me to wonder if they wanted to implement AI into it as well. And of course, if you look at their ycombinator company page (their actual site is shit and has no info on it just 2 different contact forms), and of course "I have experience in operational excellence, business development, compliance, and deep understanding of AI, NLP". (Unrelated, I know it is a different term here, but off is the NLP abbreviation badly chosen, it always reminds me of Neuro-linguistic programming).
this is so brazenly obvious grift that it took me a re-read to notice
not enough people are planning for this
The Palladium guys are shilling.
that said throwing SM-6 at threat until it disintegrates is not sustainable approach. but they're not providing alternative that works
China does have a great number of civilian ships that are basically fishing boats ready to turn into supply craft and 1shot landing vessels.
But the use case for a missile like this is basically filled completely by the gun that they still slap on every warship, or a WW2 style strafing run by anything on a carrier
i think that SDB is also an option, maybe it'll need a new sensor or something, but it has enough of warhead, it exists, and it's cheaper
SDB-II can do moving targets I think.
That simplifies things a bit