$1M a shot seems like a lot until you look at what goes into each one, how much development costs, and the environment it is designed for. You don’t need corruption to make these expensive. Also, the are based on 30 year old technology. Rather than being cheaper than new, they tend to be more expensive due to requiring miniature mechanisms which were cutting edge in 199x. And there are no other uses for them in their hardened configuration so you don’t get economy of scale of something like a commercial ship or board. Plus there’s a lot of paperwork and you can’t sell a single piece unless the government approves it. This is so far from a consumer item there isn’t even a way to compare costs.
FWIW, corruption would cost roughly the same price but you’d receive a missile with shoddy components and forged paperwork. Just look at Russia’s army to see the difference in munition reliability.
Thats what the “free” market does to a countries military industry. Lots of corruption.
$1M a shot seems like a lot until you look at what goes into each one, how much development costs, and the environment it is designed for. You don’t need corruption to make these expensive. Also, the are based on 30 year old technology. Rather than being cheaper than new, they tend to be more expensive due to requiring miniature mechanisms which were cutting edge in 199x. And there are no other uses for them in their hardened configuration so you don’t get economy of scale of something like a commercial ship or board. Plus there’s a lot of paperwork and you can’t sell a single piece unless the government approves it. This is so far from a consumer item there isn’t even a way to compare costs.
FWIW, corruption would cost roughly the same price but you’d receive a missile with shoddy components and forged paperwork. Just look at Russia’s army to see the difference in munition reliability.
Those are basically small self flying stealth jets. Just to give you an idea.