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Comment by IshKebab

1 year ago

$4k per drone... ouch.

A lot of money if you're a UK benefits recipient, not a lot of money for a piece of military equipment. Slightly more than the annual allowance of one asylum seeker.

Whole program is about a third of the cost of a Type 26 Frigate.

  • The asylum seeker comparison is interesting.

    While I want to reduce the number, I can't but help think how we essentially create them in the first place by destroying the countries which create the economic conditions they flee from.

    • Asylum seekers are not fleeing bad economic conditions, or at least they are claiming not to. Also, we didn't create refugees from Syria or Ukraine - Syria and Russia did.

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Kamikaze FPV drones starts from $400 (without warhead), from $1000 if it has 20km of optic fiber or is an interceptor. If it is not a kamikaze, like heavy bomber or reconnaissance - $10k+.

Extremely affordable!

  • How much does 20km of optic fibre weigh? Why don't these fibre strands suffer from the same physical limits as cabling used in suspension bridges? To be clear: I am not doubting that multi-kilometer optic fibre controlled drones do not exist. There are plenty of highly quality news sources and YouTube videos about them.

One Tu-22M is $100 million.

  • It is priceless. It's not produced anymore. You can't exchange $100 million for new Tu-22M. Not exactly priceless, you probably can replicate the production by rebuilding the factories for every component and all related production chains. But that'll be much more than $100 million.