The US arsenal has been virtually stripped of 155 mm artillery shells:
This has produced a situation where the US military has a powerful incentive to not only buy more 155 mm shells, but to buy the most technologically advanced version.
The Sub-Caliber Artillery Long-Range Projectile is designed to strike targets at long range with extremely high precision using a standard 155 mm gun. It can hit both stationary and moving targets at ranges of well over 68 miles (110 km), greater than the range of its predecessor. The ultimate objective of the shell is to achieve one-shot, one-kill.
[…]
The details of the new projectile haven’t been released, though we do know that it’s a sabot round. That is, the projectile is sealed in a canister that strips away when it leaves the gun muzzle, revealing the aerodynamic projectile. In flight, the projectile deploys fins and wings and a motor (a rocket or a ramjet) to provide additional speed and range.
Inside, there is an avionics package to guide the projectile to its target and electronic countermeasures to fend off hostile jamming. This is particularly impressive engineering because these electronics must withstand a shock of 15,500 gs when fired from the gun.
Costing a kajillion dollars each.
Seems that we should be able to cut such costs by a factor of ten and still keep people interested in the work.
The Department of War’s cost is the Department of War’s war contractor’s profit.
Watching footage from Ukraine with a larger drone playing the surveillance/hunter role and providing intel for the smaller attack drones. The smaller drones being very versatile in both direction and angle of attack, sometimes flying right into the small entrance to a shelter within a trench network.
Not needing a multi-ton and (multi-)million dollar launch system plus prime mover.
On the other hand, if you calculate what it would cost the US military to fire a basic shell (or drop a dumb bomb), the increased accuracy of a smart weapon is probably cost effective.
I get why they are trying to force the acronym SCALPEL in order to emphasize the precision, but the EL is gonna get dropped because (1) enhanced lethality is just too much extra to say or write out when expressing the full name – even the article author can’t help stopping at the natural linguistic place of the modified noun ‘projectile’, and (2) Joe tends to want to make the use of a noun into a verb, and here there is already a suitably violent verb, “Let’s SCALP the bastards!” That will be officially discouraged, but likely dominate usage.
The cost of military procurement is dwarfed by military personnel costs. High tech gadgetry can save money if it enables a reduction in personnel.
“This is particularly impressive engineering because these electronics must withstand a shock of 15,500 gs when fired from the gun.”
Impressive indeed…but the proximity-fused shells introduced late in WWII were likewise fired from artillery and subjected to high G forces…and their electronics was based on ***vacuum tubes***
The Excaliber 155 mm shell, which is self-directing, was put aside in Afghanistan in favor of guided gravity bombs, because is was too expensive. I believe the differential was something like $100,000 per shell to $20,000 per bomb.
Of course, none of it mattered. The Taliban won hands down without any artillery or air craft. Just good old AK 47′s, RPG’s, man portable mortars, and grit. What the American military and people lack is grit–born losers.
The talichads had something to fight for; obedient virgin wives, a band of brothers, a future.
The GAE meanwhile offered nothing except gay pride parades and feminism. Noone wanted to fight for gay pride parades and feminism, and noone who wanted gay pride parades could fight.
No familiy, no children, no future, no hope. That’s why frogs are all dropping out of society and becoming NEETs instead of repairing bridges or driving trucks or dying for trotskyism. What’s the point of anything without patrimony? You’re just gonna die soon anyways. Might as well not even bother.
What the American military and people lack is grit — born losers.
It is not grit, it is permanence. Taliban live there and have and their children to be there. Americans don’t want their children to be in Afghanistan.
Do you know how many Excalibur shells were in the 2022 budget (before Ukraine of course)?
77. Total. That’s about one major engagement.
Our actual arms expenditures and the entirely mythical MIC will be a disappointment to most of you when you see it’s not there….and really never was..
Voters f-cked around with the party of war and welfare until it was too late and now they’ll find out…
Meanwhile I don’t think the big arms race is happening on our side, unless you mean talk, and BTW the greatly reduced and much abused 5 remaining defense firms don’t either.
All the BIG FIVE’s 2020 profits altogether came to less than half of what WALMART made that year:
$246B of THE BIG FIVE vs WALMART $523B.
The truth is we coasted a long time on Reagan’s army which was coasting on the Vietnam Army which was coasting on the WW2 industrial base — said WW2 base still makes our munitions, the stuff that actually goes BANG, as opposed to the high tech gizmos middle age children go gaga over.
“$246B of THE BIG FIVE vs WALMART $523B.”
Oops. Don’t compare revenues of any kind of business to those of a store. Stores take a tiny cut out of a huge, predictable flow.
This is not to say that the defense industry is too big or too small. I wonder whether in deciding that, we could compare the percentage of budget a country might pay for “defense” with the percentage of family budget we pay for home “defense”. The latter would include some fraction of property taxes, for instance.
Mere size doesn’t tell you much. Besides, Wal-Mart is just as much a part of the centrally planned capitalist security state as the out-and-out defense contractors.
https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2019/04/25/walmarts-new-intelligent-retail-lab-shows-a-glimpse-into-the-future-of-retail-irl
But I suppose it’s just a coincidence that Wal-Mart’s testbed is literally, not figuratively, Levittown.