Most Expensive Active Duty Military Weapons

Modern warfare is expensive, and each new fighter jet and aircraft carrier is exorbitantly priced! Check out today's massive new narrative, in which we examine the top most costly military equipment currently in use! 📢📡❗

It can be challenging for military weapons programs to estimate their true costs. It is challenging to determine the true costs of military programs because they include everything from R&D to parts, materials, and labor, combined with inflation. The fact that so many subcontractors are used in the production of military weapons today further complicates the situation and raises the possibility that taxpayers will never fully understand the true costs. Despite all of this, it is still possible to generate a respectable estimate. You can split the cost of a weapons program into two categories: total program cost and total unit cost. The total cost of a program would be the sum of the costs incurred from the time of its inception until retirement.

A weapon system's unit cost is the sum of money spent on research, development, production, and delivery. In this narrative, we'll take a look at the most expensive military equipment units that are currently in use. South Korea's military underwent extensive renovations in the 1990s, including the number-ten K2 Black Panther tank. The South Korean government wanted to modernize its military hardware so that it could compete with North Korea and enter the global arms market because the nation had primarily used hand-me-down Cold War equipment from the 1950s through the 1990s. Just one issue remained, though. At best, South Korea's domestic arms market was minuscule.

The South Korean industrial base was not prepared to handle the military's request to redesign an entire line of domestically produced tanks, ships, small arms, and other equipment the government wanted because it had never fully researched and produced all of its own weapon systems before. Even though it became clear that South Korean industry faced steep learning curves in developing cutting-edge military equipment, politicians in that country continued to push forward. This learning curve was perhaps nowhere more apparent than with its armored forces. South Korea was still using outdated M48 tanks that were given to them in the 1950s in the 1990s.

Instead of a contemporary battlefield, these tanks belonged in a museum. As a result, Korean manufacturers were forced to create each system from the ground up. It was necessary to design and conduct initial experiments with a variety of items, including armor, fire control, countermeasures, ammunition, communication technology, the engine, and much more. The program was ultimately delayed for years by problems the Koreans were having with the engines in the K2 Black Panther. It took a few test batches of tanks before the government gave up on a truly domestically produced engine and teamed up with a German company to help design new engines because the domestically produced engines tended to cavitate.

The K2 ultimately cost an astounding $8 as a result of all these delays. Each tank is worth $5 million. Nine M1 Abrams tanks The M1 Abrams tank has been the cornerstone of American armored supremacy since the 1980s. The Main Battle Tank served as the foundation for the Abrams program, which sought to develop a universal vehicle that would replace other classes of tanks like medium and light tanks. The Army had made an attempt at this with the M60 tank in the 1960s, and the idea had been around for decades, but it took decades to fully integrate all of the advantages that heavy, medium, and light tanks brought to the battlefield into one platform.

The Army did not find its ideal vehicle until it came across the Abrams. Building a new generation of main battle tanks, however, was challenging. In fact, a number of cutting-edge technologies that had never been used before would need to be incorporated by the Abrams. Its armor defense played a part in that. Traditional tank armor at the time was either sloped steel armor plating or reactive, explosive blocks. The Abrams' engineering team wanted to try something new. They had to start by developing a brand-new, highly secure composite armor that would wrap around the exterior. They would then need to create non-explosive reactive armor that they could sandwich between the other two plates.

By developing this new armor system, the Abrams was able to repel nearly all high explosive and anti-tank munitions that an adversary could fire at it. Other features like countermeasures, a communications suite, optics, and a fire control system all contributed to the tank's enormous cost in addition to the armor developments. With these early technologies, the US spent about $6 in fiscal year 1999. Each tank costs $11 million. That is approximately 8 when adjusted for inflation which is about 92,000,000 in today's currency. The Abrams continues to require expensive development and maintenance. According to Congressional budget projections made public in 2021, the Abrams will consume roughly 40 percent of the Army's armor budget over the following several decades as the service continues to modernize it and create newer models.

The French and Emirati armies favor the Leclerc tank as their primary battle tank. While some estimates put the price at $30 million per car, this seems a little high. Given how much time the French invested in researching and creating a new main battle tank, the Leclerc's initial production runs were high in part because of this. Even though development for the Leclerc tank began in 1964, it wasn't until 1990 that the first one left the factory. Along with the design difficulties in creating a modern tank to combat emerging technologies, finding a suitable partner was a contributing factor in the development. One of the only ways that the French government would permit the project to precede was if the military could find another government to help with cost-sharing for the tank.

After searching for years, the French government finally found an agreement with the UAE to roughly split the cost of creating the new tanks. In 1990, production of the tank finally began in full force, thanks to an abundance of Emirati cash. The years of research and development that went into those initial production runs resulted in very high production costs, which were reflected in the production run of just under 900 tanks. The cost to produce a Leclerc, however, was given a more accurate estimate only last year by the French government. The government placed an order for nearly 300 tanks to be delivered by 2030 at a cost of roughly $15 million per unit in order to keep up with shifting battlefield demands.

The Trident II missile, which makes up the Navy's nuclear triad for nuclear deterrence on land, sea, and air, is listed as the seventh missile in the nuclear triad. Submarines equipped with guided missiles from the US and the UK house the Trident II. The Trident II was developed beginning in the late 1970s and is the most recent model in the family of Trident missiles that dates back to the early Cold War era. A longer-range, more precise nuclear ballistic missile was requested at that time by Congress, which approached the military with the request. As part of the contract, Congress directed the military to purchase each component of the missile with as much competition as possible.

The cost increased inevitably because there were so many contractors involved in creating each component of the missile. The missile's extended range and new and improved three-stage launch system were additional factors that increased the price. The navigation system on board the Trident II was also updated and improved. The missile is immune to any attempts at jamming because it calculates and self-corrects its own course internally while in flight, combining celestial navigation from astronomical bodies with inertial guidance.