I always wonder where they get these huge costs for military operations. Do they include the personnel and operating costs of the units involved? Costs that would be paid no matter what they were doing. Or is the SM-3 $30 million a copy?
There is cost
(From a 2006 article )
Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN) has been awarded a contract with a total value of $266 million to build, test and deliver Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) rounds to the Missile Defense Agency to meet the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense deployment requirements. Initial funding of $168 million has been issued.
The contract calls for SM-3 Block IA missiles to be produced for the United States and Japan and for flight test support, engineering activity, system upgrades and continued cooperative research and development work with Japan.
Other sources place the unit cost of a SM-3 at ‘about’ 10M a pop.
and then, there is COST
“Military analyst John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said the success of the missile tests bodes well, but it’s unclear whether the government will buy enough missiles to form a reliable shield.
“The real question isn’t ’How well is it doing?’ The question is, ’Am I still worried about North Korea’s nuclear missiles?’ “ Pike said
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