this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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this one slaps. it's always difficult to visualize just how much a large amount of money can be and just how readily they burn it on death.
Not just death, often for nothing at all. How many of those videos were missiles fired into open ocean?
accessories to death. training, testing, intimidating and such.
Except it's just completely random numbers slapped on the footage.
One of the torpedos we are actively using in a Iran right now costs $4.8 million each.
One of the missiles shown I believe is the RIM-116 (not been in it for a while), each one costs $950,000.
The numbers shown might not be 100% accurate but they're very much in the correct ballpark
What first made me completely disbelieve the video was the Phalanx costing hundreds of thousands in a few seconds. That's order of magnitude wrong. Yes, the RIM-116 is in the ballpark although still too high.
Anyway, the video is bullshit. That has nothing to do with whether the point it is trying to make is. No need to get that defensive.
Except the ultimate point is how much money we spend on pointless death. And you dissing a video for making that point when it got one wrong is kind part of it. It's missing the forest for the trees.
Going bigger picture, the war in Iran is costing $70 million a day currently (actual estimates I've seen. even worse with Pentagon's own billion a day estimate). That would cover food stamps for over ten million people. That's the point of the video, not the specific numbers for a phalanx shell
It's not getting one wrong. But much more importantly, if your point is backed up by fake numbers, no one who didn't agree with you from the start is going to take you seriously. Pointing bullshit early is important, unless you want your greater point undermined by bullshit numbers.
they do look plausible enough. it does cost them a couple of million per missile, or hundreds of dollars per second to fire.
not to mention how the corrupt contractors will inflate the costs as much as possible for taxpayers to pay for them.
care to name the weapon system and it's actual cost for munitions and rearmament? Or is this a "trust me bro" moment?
I could go search for them, or you could notice that the price tag is different for each of the 3 torpedo launches shown despite being the same type of torpedo. 🤡
Anyway, the CIWS systems like the phalanx (minigun looking shit) cost around $3,500 per second, not above $50k a second like the video would suggest.
Now can you facture in the person firing it, the ship it's firing from, the cost to operate that ship, the radar that's used to target what it's firing, and the R&D costs of that weapon alone?
How? How do you assign how much of the R&D should be counted for the one missile fire or burst from a Phalanx? How much of the ship operation cost? The few seconds on the video? When I have no context of when and where these firings happened?
And much more importantly, what for? How would pricing random weapons firing on a random video help anyone with anything?
For example, F35 cost like $2 trillion when all costs are considered, but only like $100mil each. Slight difference, right? And to the second part, that's the whole point of the thread, how much money America would save if it wasn't for these weapons.
If the thread is about people who already agree with the point slapping each other on the back, sure, go ahead.
But if you want to convince anyone, you may not want your numbers to be obviously made up. Putting aside that the phalanx shooting is an order of magnitude off, the same torpedo has 3 different prices one after another. Even someone who has no idea how much these things cost can see it's BS if they pay attention.
OK, but you also see how saying America would've saved $100mil if it didn't have an F35 in a video would also be misleading, right?
Yes.