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[Frumple]

... what are you even going on about? Didn't say any of that, just comparing costs to something a bit more relatable to most folks than missiles.

[Strife26]

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

[Azzuro]

sluissa's point is that the Tomahawks were already manufactured and paid for way before Trump gave the order. Thus they can't exactly be converted back to cash to fund public schools, despite that being much better for America. So it's pointless to complain about this specific strike in particular as there was no way to convert the weapons to peaceful purposes, and there isn't even much cost associated with the action of firing them or not, rather, the cost came when they were manufactured in lieu of public schools.

Unless the military could have sold those missiles to other countries, but I'm pretty sure the military would just put in an order for more. Sometimes I'm glad that the US spends so much on defence because it means countries under their defence umbrella can spend less on theirs, and more on social programs. Then I remember my government insists on spending a inordinate amount on the military anyway.

[Frumple]

... which is fine and all, but I wasn't complaining about that. Like, of all the things I'll complain about so far as this shit goes the material costs are one of the things I give the least damns about, if for no other reason than, as is completely sodding obvious, the money was already dumped in the gun sump and there's not much to get back out of it. Would have preferred them better used, sure, but most of my concerns there are second order costs. Literally just making the comparison for perspective, since 90 million in missiles means basically fuck all to me, and presumably most people. Year of schooling for seven and a half thousand students I can wrap my head around a lot more easily.

[MrRoboto75]

But how will I mildly inconvenience an enemy airbase with these useless schools?

[Frumple]

There's a saying, robo. "Everything can be air dropped at least once."

[Greiger]

Admittedly dropping a school on one of the runways would probably have been more effective at disabling it than a tomahawk.

[Frumple]

Hell, ignoring the transportation and delivery issues I'm pretty sure dropping 45-90 million dollars worth of school on it could have covered most of the air base in masonry, metal, and glass, never mind just the runways.

[penguinofhonor]

I'm confused by the whole "the missiles were already paid for" thing... don't we generally replace missiles that we use? If we're just depleting our stocked up weapons as a means to disarm ourselves, I'm all for it, but that doesn't seem likely.

[Starver]

Don't forget the most destructive force ever encountered...  Schoolkids left to their own devices, to run amok...

[Jopax]

Tactical yield schools with secondary effect schoolkid sub-munitions. Devastating first impact followed by a virtually uninhabitable wasteland that takes months of work to clean up.

[Max™]

For the record: the Tomahawks launched amount to spitting distance of 90 million.

For the record: that number is at BEST not the whole story and at worst completely dishonest.

At best you have to account for the fact that you've already paid for these missiles and other 3450~ sitting in storage or on ships somewhere. And whether they're launched or not you've basically lost that money.

At worst the total cost of the tomahawks the US has purchased over the 30+ years they've been in service is somewhere under 2.5 billion. Which puts the avg cost of one at under 700k. Which would make the launch something under HALF that 90 million mark.

Buying brand new top of the line tomahawks does cost a lot... something about a million and a half each. But the navy is buying those one way or another. But at the same time they're buying them, they're also scaling back the purchases, preparing to phase them out completely in the coming years. That fact is driving up the price significantly given that you're losing the economy of scale on them and also incentivising Raytheon to squeeze as much as possible out of a program that's going away before the money dries up.

I was under the impression that they were newer ones, hence the quoted cost, but more accuracy is good since I wasn't making a point on any discussion, just saw that the number was vaguely mentioned in relation to Trump spending (I woulda gone with the whole "fly down to Florida and back all the fucking time" stuff instead of golf trips) and that's the value I saw for them.

Military spending is a weird thing due to how much of a grab-bag of fuckery and weird organization everything ends up being since that one senator from nebrahomansasodakota pushes to make sure that they get something made in their state, even if it's just the rivets used to hold the left aileron in place or whatever.

[Dunamisdeos]

My impression is that they were drawing from a stockpile or missiles already stored on vessels already out at sea. Therefore no additional loss has been incurred, since they just sort of add a certain amount to that stockpile every year regardless.

I haven't done research, but it doesn't make sense that they noticed the incident, bought some missiles that they already have in a warehouse, put them on a ship that wasn't presently launched, and then fired those all in like 2 days.

[Max™]

Not quite what I or I assume anyone means when we say "x y dollars worth of military hardware" as it is generally talking about costs spent or in some cases potential sale value, like if someone was flying an F-16 we were selling and crashed it, there's a dollar value you can quantify there. Personally I think it's rather silly using that measure anyways, how many kg of boom was it?

[Dunamisdeos]

Not quite what I or I assume anyone means when we say "x y dollars worth of military hardware" as it is generally talking about costs spent or in some cases potential sale value, like if someone was flying an F-16 we were selling and crashed it, there's a dollar value you can quantify there. Personally I think it's rather silly using that measure anyways, how many kg of boom was it?

Each one had half a ton of boom, so 29.5 tons of boom. That's 26761kg of boom according to the internet.

And yeah that's true, but I keep seeing people framing it as if it was money we could have spent on something else (in general, not necessarily here). From what I understand these things were probably bought back during like, The Clinton administration. In fact, upon googling I found that we actually doubled our purchase rate of tomahawks way back in 2014. So these might be Obama missiles Obamissiles.