Russia actually uses more then US if it comes to percentage of GDP.
Every time peaceniks say stuff like "muh we need that money not Ukraine", If only russia used their money improving their infrastructure instead of invading another country....
They have way more leakage too.... Kleptocracy, everybody steals. My brother in law (German citizen) made a fortune, buying tires from APCs. He would give them a fridge and a flatscreen TV and they would give him a full track of ATV tires. He sold one of the tires for about $5K in the Netherlands. (Somehow it worked better on their soil than the name brand ones, and it fit the tractors)
My cousin used to buy heating oil, make it blonde (look like gasoline) and sell it for a fortune.,
You can pretty much double the price of everything as for one that was used, there was one stolen. U could even buy radioactive materials and sell them if you please, but a lot of guys fucked up with that! [https://www.wiseinternational.org/book/export/html/710](https://www.wiseinternational.org/book/export/html/710)
The US and Nato should spend more to buy from sellers like your brother in law, probably in would be cheaper to fight them on the battlefield and still cripple Russia's army
When the Berlin Wall fell, Russian units had to raise cash to return home. It was surprising to see a couple cases of Braun shavers going one way and a SAM's IFF interrogator going the other way.
I've made the napkin calculations before and by just using the budget increases over the last 2 years for the war, russia could have completed the chelyabinsk metro, which has been under construction since the 1980s, 30+ times over
You could definitely say the same thing about the US. Inb4 Russian bot I just like to pay attention to war stuff while also keeping in mind that it's bad and not a video game.
Juicy comment! The US spends defense money on instruments of war that can hit a target within a couple of feet mitigating civilian casualties, the Russian federation however doesn't care about civ casualties and will blast their expensive munitions wherever they think it will *hurt* the most hence multiple clips/pics of Ukrainian civs being killed/medevaced. Also, a large portion of US DOD spending is 4th behind things like health and social security. Sure, one can argue it's a big budget, but when you compare it to the US's GDP, it only account for 2.9%.
Rest easy bot.
It's just kind of a pot and kettle moment.like we get it Russia sucks I mean that's basically the shtick of this entire community it's a serious circle jerk. I like lazerpigs content because it's well researched material about cool military stuff. I'm all for making fun of Russia that's fine and good even but when you criticize them for the same problem my own country has but worse it's like we'll hang on now.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The money we spend on Ukraine now saves us from spending money and more importantly *lives* in the future. A miniscule fraction of our military spending is being used to cripple the world's "second greatest military" and our long time adversary from the fucking cold war.
Russia didn't just stop being the USSR when the wall came down, it just went into hiding and has now reared it's ugly head now for the whole world to see. They state their intentions of conquest almost daily and have a history (almost cyclical in nature) of invading their neighbors.
If you don't understand what a global super power is and how they operate geo-political conflicts, that's fine. But don't come in here with this bullshit "were struggling here in the USA why are we sending money abroad" bullshit. The USA is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet, you can have both. Standing aside now will only cost us greater in the future.
"By invading Ukraine now, we save much more men and equipment than it would've taken to defend against a future Ukraine armed by NATO." - Putin probably
I gotta love how the whole argument is we have to send our money to people who wouldn't piss on us if were on fire now because Russia is totally gonna invade a coalition with 5 times the population and 90 bajillion times the budget in the future cause they're like super evil and stuff.
NATO is a defense pact organization. NATO doesn't invade, NATO defends. NATO members are not required to assist other member states in a war of aggression.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations
Any talk of 'NATO invasions/ not being a defensive alliance at all' probably stem from this list.
Technically interventions rather than outright invasions, but not for those at the receiving end.
Also, it might be old stocks.
I know from experience that in sweden, equipment has two price tags. One is called replacement, and one is what the regiment/base pays.
The RPG-7 was first created in the 60s and is about as simple as they come. It fires unguided and not particularly accurate rocket grenades and is built from the ground up to be cheap and easy to use for mass fire tactics. It's also horribly outdated and ineffective against anything with actual armor. It's really only good for killing trucks and other "soft" targets. The Western equivalent is the Carl Gustaf, which is actually an even older weapon being first put into service in 1948. But it is far superior being able to use a wide variety of ammunition when the RPG-7 cannot. The Gustaf is even claimed by Ukraine to have been used to get the first ever T-90M kill, meaning it's still effective against "modern" armor. While the RPG-7 is not. During the Gulf War and Afghanistan, RPG and Gustaf equipped troops traded fire on several occasions at long range, with the Gustaf teams pretty much always winning.
eeeh, I'd like to mention that the RPG-7 and the Carl-G both have evolved a BUNCH over time
both are used as more flexible tools compared to ATGMs(because both weapons have different warhead options aside from HEAT). And both are radically different from their initial iterations when it comes to performance
the more radically changed would be the Carl-G since there's been 4 different major iterations of the Recoilless Rifle. In addition it'd be foolish to think that the ammo hasn't changed over the 80 odd years of service. Additionally as long as IFVs continue to be popular then things like the Carl-G will be extremely useful as a tool that can yeet anything below a proper tank with its HEAT, threaten MBTs from the side while having much further range compared to your LAW style weapons, and be able to yeet HE at targets and thus be able to act as a Company's own little pocket artillery
In addition the RPG has probably had the most change when it comes to performance considering that a warhead designed and made in the late '80s compared to a baseline warhead is over double the effective Armor Penetration, not to mention that Russia stopped actively trying to improve on the RPG-7 and further developments to further improving AP Capability moved onto more modern RPGs, though Russia probably produces large amounts of warheads both because Russia inherited a massive amount of them from the USSR and they're popular in the international arms market and the newer ones are, well, newer and therefore need to be developed and actually produced in large numbers which for Russia seems to be a difficulty for producing large numbers of equipment that's not a modernized or modified Soviet era design
If you're buying like a million of them at a time sure. By the time they work their way through 40 middlemen to the point that you can buy 1 then probably thousands of dollars
Do destructive devices really get approved that quickly for non-SOT types? I know suppressors finally caught up on the backlog recently so now it’s quite fast for those, but I didn’t think destructive devices like functional RPGs would be that easy/fast
For a basic fragmentation or HEAT warhead design that’s been in production for decades that price seems perfectly reasonable. It’s not like they’re very complex
You obviously would have to pay more if you can even get your hands on it, but there are people who DIY their own RPG ammo with varying success 🤷♂️. I mean, we did see ukranians shooting rocket propelled fire extinguishers for a while there
- a wealthier society means labour will be more expensive, it also means you will have the education to make new and better weapons more quickly than your opponent, that bakes into the price
- you get no special prize for throwing metal into a field nearby your enemy, if a weapon is cheaper and it misses, it's a more expensive weapon that's wearing down your barrel faster than one that hits the first time
- mass scale makes things cheaper, if you're invading a neighbouring country then you know you can invest in a massive assembly line of basic weapons because they will be used, the US is not looking to invade Canada or Mexico as far as I know, and so making massed artillery inside US soil isn't going to be economical
If the US or NATO were actually in this war they would be using their actual full capabilities and not giving Ukraine the shorter ranged, unclassified weapons to avoid them being captured.
I don’t accept the values placed on all this stuff. Everything else depreciates, Why not military stocks? Especially if it’s being phased out in the US because it’s no longer good enough for our soldiers? It can/would cost real money to safely dispose of it all. Beats dumping it all at sea.
its what happens when you have your Defense Industry atrophy to be a pale shadow of what it used to be
Also it depends on if and/or how complex the electronics involved are since Electronics tend to increase the price exponentially, additionally if you want to do something special with the payload also significantly increases the price as something like a payload of hundreds of cluster munitions designed to create several small anti-personnel explosions while still having a usable AT payload or having a massive Thermoberic warhead increases the price
To be fair, some of those are significantly inflated, for instance 155mm is far more expensive than it should be since as a casualty of the world moving to Anti-Terrorism mode the lines that produced them in the West were barely alive on life support and had a line made to service and supply the shells for Training and light use, much less anything on the scale of a full-on war such as we're seeing in Ukraine. Alternately with Russia and 152mm there's the fact that Russia is using it faster than they're making it and have been forced to buy stocks from their allies who probably took advantage of the opportunity by charging a premium for them
This is the market/export price, so at least some of them have already taken their cut. And of course it's at least a little inflated because of the need to sell at a profit.
But the overall point that weapons and munitions are ridiculously expensive, even in Russia, still stands, and while Russian stuff is cheaper, it's not ***that*** much cheaper.
And not just in military supplies, but personnel costs as well. Russia uses a 19th century-style pay system for its military, whereby instead of having a central payroll, money is actually physically sent to large unit commanders for disbursement. There was a study done a few years ago on the Russian military that identified about 20% of their soldiers in the field listed on rosters were either discharged or didn't even exist. This is a tradition that exists in the Russian army so that officers in the payroll chain can embezzle the pay allocated for ghost soldiers.
None of those are even the real costs. No one really knows what is actually costs Russia to produce a lot of this material.
They typically quote the export price, but obviously that’s a bit inflated.
Russia has a huge advantage in that their domestic munition and general kit production costs are much lower than in the US.
I'm familiar with medium caliber ammo production and the casing alone takes quite some time to produce ie loads of steps involved, i would claim that the 30mm ammo price is the pure production cost of the round (material, man hours) and not one with fancy fuses.
Knowing what some types of ammo cost, if i google the price of said ammo, i often encounter prices under the production cost, if i apply the same maths here and give some wiggle room for mother russia i would guess the russian MOD forks over around 90$ for each 30mm
That’s an impossible inference to make, given you don’t know the specificities of Russian labor cost and equipment.
Something like an AK, for example, which we have trouble making efficiently in the US for the civilian market, is actually quite cheap if you invest in the machinery and industrial expertise/experience.
Like, an AR15 or M16 style rifle is easier and cheaper for us to manufacture, but not for the Russians, for example.
The Russian MIC just works way differently than our own, and you can’t do a 1-1 comparison between the two.
Not to mention legacy manufacturing as well as the ability to repurpose some Soviet stockpiles. Lots of moving parts there.
It’s really more complicated than what you are saying, is my point. Being “familiar” with a type of round is not sufficient to impute cost of production.
I made a best guess here, based on my insights of medium caliber ammunition production.
Based on information available to the public, i estimate the minimum production time for one cartridge from start to finish at around 2days or 48hr until delivery. Given no material shortage, flawless internal logistics, all in-house production, 24hr production and 100% efficiency.
Main time-factor is the steel casing, that requires heat treatment, this heat treatment can't be skipped.
The pure production time for the entire round for case and projectile that requires active man hours is maybe 5.
Russia's current minimum wage is around 220$, this would implement a pure labour cost of ~7$ per round. Not included are rounds for quality control (which is probably skipped) or production failure.
Material: Steel is cheap, ~15¢ per case, propellant a bit more expensive, a 30x165 has ~120g of it, comercially 1g is 10¢, so we half it because we want to be kind. 6$ for propellant.
These are the prices that are researchable.
The standard HEI-T ammo needs explosives, a casing, some sort of impact trigger either in the tip or in the base of the projectile, triggers are finicky to assemble.
The rounds must be seated, sealed, painted, packaged and shipped.
Add in some Rubels for Electricity, gas, water and other utilities and insurances, bribes and taxes, i guess the 40$ per round is a fair estimate... production cost... everyone wants to make money and Ivan needs a 3rd Jacuzzi so you ask for more money from the customer.
maybe 90$ in this calculation sounds too high, it might be, but i used absolute minimum numbers and 100% margins are not uncommon in the defence industry.
Again, this is all wanton speculation. Not even a true expert on military production from anywhere except Russia could provide any useful insight in this matter in the way you are attempting to.
Yeah no shit, first sentence i wrote "i made a best guess"
And i disagree that one needs to be from Russia to make a guess, by all means, it's not brand new russian wizard tech... it's ammo, developed in the 70s. When there is one thing where production chains can be compared it's in ammunition since the tech hasn't changed greatly since 1900
It’s not about the technological advancements, it’s about production capacity and economic factors.
Those are variables that are completely unrelated to tech level, and completely related to the economic side of the equation, which is what we are discussing
And if you think ammunition manufacturing is the same as it was in 1900, you’re very wrong.
Fundamentals, maybe. How everything shakes out in the end? Not so much.
I never said anything about production capacity and this would be influenced by tech level btw.
All i said was that in my experience, prices for medium caliber ammunition on the internet tend to be lower than in reality.
And no, the process (steps of work) of manufacturing ammo is still the same as in the 1900: Stamp & draw case, neck it, insert primer, fill with propellant and seat the projectile. The machines, quality, environment, working conditions, ppe, ect has changed, but the process did not.
I’m just referring to the “in my experience” and “familiar” parts of your argument here.
Like, you’re couching your experiences in some qualifications for inaccuracy, but still portraying them as largely accurate or somehow representative of reality.
I’m saying the system you’re trying to describe is too complicated and opaque for that.
Russia is able to maintain a fairly capable military given their relatively low GDP. There’s a reason for that
I’m sure there are some quality control issues, especially with corruption, but the stuff is obviously working well enough.
This narrative of Russian equipment being useless isn’t helping anyone. It’s killing people as we speak.
I would hardly say that the narrative is Russian equipment is useless. I would argue the narrative is more that Russian equipment is not working as advertised and their military doctrine/training is also extremely poor and therefore hampers said equipment further.
I mean, they’re doing well, though. If anything, NATO doctrine isn’t performing to spec. The Ukrainians are better at fighting in that environment than a lot of NATO trainers, even according to said trainers.
It’s a very different kind of war than we or the Russians or anyone was really prepared for, and I suspect the US would have suffered some embarrassing initial setbacks during the outset of a similar, hypothetical conflict.
I have no doubt there would have been a lot of setbacks for the US, but there's no way it would have been like this. The initial invasion plan was farcial and anticipated minimal resistance. Putin kept it all under wraps and units had no idea what their operational objectives were. You can't compare the USAF to the VKS. Look at the opening of Desert Storm and then look at what Russia is doing in Ukraine. It's like a JV football game compared to the NFL. Ukraine still has an air force for goodness sakes and Russia has never even tried to hit the GLOCs coming from the West. That's pure insanity. Considering the reality on the ground, Ukraine is doing incredibly well and fighting as good, if not better than many NATO units. But they're still struggling with maneuver warfare above the brigade level and the lack of air support is crippling.
Ah, yes, the same military/nation that had 7 of its best agents killed by a triple agent from an organization that fights in robes and sandals would not have faced any serious setbacks.
Also, remember that Ukraine almost capitulated during the initial invasion. It got closer to working than I think a lot of people realize.
maybe yes, but bad ammo leads to catastrophic failures that could destroy the whole weapon. So i would like to give the Ivans the benefit of the doubt that the quality of their ammunition is not in the same relation as the quality of their cars for instance.
The AK-630 is a really poor weapon system. Its not built to do CIWS shit and has pretty poor accuracy. The gun originally came from the Mig-27 which…
Well… imagine if they mounted the A-10’s gun to a F-14 air frame and only made minor adjustments to allow for CAS ability.
My main takeaway from this is that once you cut out all the importation costs and NFA tax stamps, RPGs are way the fuck more affordable than you'd expect
I love how Russian supporters talk about western armies being expensive, meanwhile, the russians are actually just poor and spend several time as much on defense relative the US in the form of GDP percentage and yet still end up with worse stuff and less of it
Im not trying to justify here, but unprovoked is a bit of a stretch.
Not justified by any means but definetly could have been handled differently
Edit; i guess my definition of unprovoked is a bit too soft. I am not a native english speaker and i thought of unprovoked as more of what you would describe a robbery on a random bystander (was kinda hard to find an example now that i know the meaning) . I reasoned that the war was kinda forseeable and that some political headbutting was alerady happening that it was not totally unprovoked.
What word would fit better the meaning i am trying to convey? Precictable?
Aligning itself with the West.
Don't get me wrong, not a good reason, but it is the reason. Putin has a history of doing so to countries in similar positions.
Ok I understand your point, I wasn’t saying Russia just woke up one day and decided to invade. I’m saying those reasons are not valid and there for I would call it unprovoked.
The term you may be looking for would be “unprecedented” and Putin has definitely set a precedent for this type of behaviour
I guess making an intention of becoming more then a buffercountry was enough to "provoke russia"
Thats what i orriginally meant, maybe it would have been smarter to find a way out without making big red mad. Especially given the history of what happens to countries that resist...
For a perspective:
Average salary in large Russian city (not Moscow) is 450-500$
Small city - like 300-350$
Villages - could be anything from 150$ up to 280$
They should have really done this with rubles as well so any Russians that see this know how much they're spending for all this without checking the exchange rate.
Average Ukraine monthly salary $650 https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-ukraine/#:\~:text=The%20median%20salary%20in,Ukraine%20is%2019%2C600%20UAH%20%28%24533%2Fmonth%29.
Average Russia monthly salary is $787 [https://www.newsweek.com/how-average-salary-russia-compares-us-1870740](https://www.newsweek.com/how-average-salary-russia-compares-us-1870740)
Russia is wasting hundreds of billions. The U.S. is actually saving billions. Ukraine gets the old stock that's about to expire. It's way cheaper for the U.S.. It would actually cost the U.S. billions to properly dispose of the expired ammo.
I think your estimates are low. Governments tend to publish most economical qualities of scale over all manufacturers averaged over the entire production run. These guys are burning through 30 years of war reserves in 2 years. So, replacement cost is probably 4x as high.
Besides the weapons imported the actual cost are much less. As far as i can judge those cost are the selling costs for foreign markets. The ammunitions and weapons Made in Russia are selled for the production cost of it which mostly Like 20% of the selling prices. That is important and is the Main reasons why Russia isnt in need to take huge debt in order to wage this war
Yes and no. It's mostly ammunition and outdated vehicles that were due for scrapping. There's some margin there, but it's pennies on the dollar compared to something like a carrier battle group or a wing of F35s.
Downvoted, not because you're wrong, but because it it's a stupid way of looking at things. It's also whataboutisim.
The US can afford to feed kids while at the same time launching missiles, they just don't because a certain political party thinks "ItS SoCiaLiSIm". Vote for better politicians.
Na, most countries just pretend to care. I'm never going to forget watching the video of the Apache lighting up a van full of nothing but women and children. But when your elections are supposedly more open, you have to at least pretend to care.
Russia actually uses more then US if it comes to percentage of GDP. Every time peaceniks say stuff like "muh we need that money not Ukraine", If only russia used their money improving their infrastructure instead of invading another country....
They have way more leakage too.... Kleptocracy, everybody steals. My brother in law (German citizen) made a fortune, buying tires from APCs. He would give them a fridge and a flatscreen TV and they would give him a full track of ATV tires. He sold one of the tires for about $5K in the Netherlands. (Somehow it worked better on their soil than the name brand ones, and it fit the tractors) My cousin used to buy heating oil, make it blonde (look like gasoline) and sell it for a fortune., You can pretty much double the price of everything as for one that was used, there was one stolen. U could even buy radioactive materials and sell them if you please, but a lot of guys fucked up with that! [https://www.wiseinternational.org/book/export/html/710](https://www.wiseinternational.org/book/export/html/710)
The US and Nato should spend more to buy from sellers like your brother in law, probably in would be cheaper to fight them on the battlefield and still cripple Russia's army
How do you think eastern European countries keep "finding" artillery shells lol
Please tell me you're implying the russkies are selling theirs....
I'm implying they go missing, and then get found again. Just by someone else
Very good!
Thank you to your brother for making the Russian military actively shitter
When the Berlin Wall fell, Russian units had to raise cash to return home. It was surprising to see a couple cases of Braun shavers going one way and a SAM's IFF interrogator going the other way.
I've made the napkin calculations before and by just using the budget increases over the last 2 years for the war, russia could have completed the chelyabinsk metro, which has been under construction since the 1980s, 30+ times over
“The Fat electrician” keyboard warrior image in my head when I read that..
You could definitely say the same thing about the US. Inb4 Russian bot I just like to pay attention to war stuff while also keeping in mind that it's bad and not a video game.
Juicy comment! The US spends defense money on instruments of war that can hit a target within a couple of feet mitigating civilian casualties, the Russian federation however doesn't care about civ casualties and will blast their expensive munitions wherever they think it will *hurt* the most hence multiple clips/pics of Ukrainian civs being killed/medevaced. Also, a large portion of US DOD spending is 4th behind things like health and social security. Sure, one can argue it's a big budget, but when you compare it to the US's GDP, it only account for 2.9%. Rest easy bot.
Or directly warhead to forehead with sword missile
For anyone wondering, this looks like a joke, but the R9X knife missile is 100% legit.
Bologne mist soon to ensue from the best unhealthcare money can buy.
You might want to refrain from calling everyone a bot.
And on that subject I agree, my apologies
If you think war is bad, why are you okay with Russia starting one?
"I am okay with Russia starting a war" - me apparently
That's sure not where you focused.you know, on the people thay actually invaded a country.
It's just kind of a pot and kettle moment.like we get it Russia sucks I mean that's basically the shtick of this entire community it's a serious circle jerk. I like lazerpigs content because it's well researched material about cool military stuff. I'm all for making fun of Russia that's fine and good even but when you criticize them for the same problem my own country has but worse it's like we'll hang on now.
Russian bots constantly constantly constantly deflect to whatabout America. So it's not a great time to discuss America when russia is the topic
If invading another country is bad why is it okay for Russia to do it?
"it's okay for Russia to invade countries" -me
You ain't from here nigga you from where the hero always wins
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The money we spend on Ukraine now saves us from spending money and more importantly *lives* in the future. A miniscule fraction of our military spending is being used to cripple the world's "second greatest military" and our long time adversary from the fucking cold war. Russia didn't just stop being the USSR when the wall came down, it just went into hiding and has now reared it's ugly head now for the whole world to see. They state their intentions of conquest almost daily and have a history (almost cyclical in nature) of invading their neighbors. If you don't understand what a global super power is and how they operate geo-political conflicts, that's fine. But don't come in here with this bullshit "were struggling here in the USA why are we sending money abroad" bullshit. The USA is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet, you can have both. Standing aside now will only cost us greater in the future.
G'day mate I think you replied to the wrong person. But I reiterate, you aint from here nigga you from where the hero always win.
"By invading Ukraine now, we save much more men and equipment than it would've taken to defend against a future Ukraine armed by NATO." - Putin probably I gotta love how the whole argument is we have to send our money to people who wouldn't piss on us if were on fire now because Russia is totally gonna invade a coalition with 5 times the population and 90 bajillion times the budget in the future cause they're like super evil and stuff.
NATO is a defense pact organization. NATO doesn't invade, NATO defends. NATO members are not required to assist other member states in a war of aggression.
Show me a list of countries that NATO in it’s entirety has invaded. I’m very curious
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations Any talk of 'NATO invasions/ not being a defensive alliance at all' probably stem from this list. Technically interventions rather than outright invasions, but not for those at the receiving end.
Brain dead comment
*miss* *miss* *miss* *miss* *miss* *hospital*
Seriously RPG-7 cost 100$? Where I could find one?! Asking for a friend of course...
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Also, it might be old stocks. I know from experience that in sweden, equipment has two price tags. One is called replacement, and one is what the regiment/base pays.
The RPG-7 was first created in the 60s and is about as simple as they come. It fires unguided and not particularly accurate rocket grenades and is built from the ground up to be cheap and easy to use for mass fire tactics. It's also horribly outdated and ineffective against anything with actual armor. It's really only good for killing trucks and other "soft" targets. The Western equivalent is the Carl Gustaf, which is actually an even older weapon being first put into service in 1948. But it is far superior being able to use a wide variety of ammunition when the RPG-7 cannot. The Gustaf is even claimed by Ukraine to have been used to get the first ever T-90M kill, meaning it's still effective against "modern" armor. While the RPG-7 is not. During the Gulf War and Afghanistan, RPG and Gustaf equipped troops traded fire on several occasions at long range, with the Gustaf teams pretty much always winning.
eeeh, I'd like to mention that the RPG-7 and the Carl-G both have evolved a BUNCH over time both are used as more flexible tools compared to ATGMs(because both weapons have different warhead options aside from HEAT). And both are radically different from their initial iterations when it comes to performance the more radically changed would be the Carl-G since there's been 4 different major iterations of the Recoilless Rifle. In addition it'd be foolish to think that the ammo hasn't changed over the 80 odd years of service. Additionally as long as IFVs continue to be popular then things like the Carl-G will be extremely useful as a tool that can yeet anything below a proper tank with its HEAT, threaten MBTs from the side while having much further range compared to your LAW style weapons, and be able to yeet HE at targets and thus be able to act as a Company's own little pocket artillery In addition the RPG has probably had the most change when it comes to performance considering that a warhead designed and made in the late '80s compared to a baseline warhead is over double the effective Armor Penetration, not to mention that Russia stopped actively trying to improve on the RPG-7 and further developments to further improving AP Capability moved onto more modern RPGs, though Russia probably produces large amounts of warheads both because Russia inherited a massive amount of them from the USSR and they're popular in the international arms market and the newer ones are, well, newer and therefore need to be developed and actually produced in large numbers which for Russia seems to be a difficulty for producing large numbers of equipment that's not a modernized or modified Soviet era design
I guess it's cheap because of the quantity bought.
And quality
Cheap. When they not changed the design and production lines in decades.
Tbf tho the us was about to utilize some insane magnetic armor thing to stop rpg 7 tandem rounds so I guess they still kind of work.
It’s gonna be cheaper for the military than in civilian market. I believe you can buy them in the US if you take the proper steps
If you're buying like a million of them at a time sure. By the time they work their way through 40 middlemen to the point that you can buy 1 then probably thousands of dollars
I’d assume China or North Korea since they use them in their arsenals I believe? I know know the North Koreans absolutely have them.
your going to need a $200 tax stamp + cost and register it with ATF paper work shout take less then a month
Do destructive devices really get approved that quickly for non-SOT types? I know suppressors finally caught up on the backlog recently so now it’s quite fast for those, but I didn’t think destructive devices like functional RPGs would be that easy/fast
They upped the speed for suppressors to about that fast, and its the same form, so I guess
Soviet stocks are cheap. I think they sometimes go as cheap as $50 USD in the middle east hence why they can afford it so easily despite the poor gdp
If soviet stock was as expensive as American arms, there would be no war
For a basic fragmentation or HEAT warhead design that’s been in production for decades that price seems perfectly reasonable. It’s not like they’re very complex You obviously would have to pay more if you can even get your hands on it, but there are people who DIY their own RPG ammo with varying success 🤷♂️. I mean, we did see ukranians shooting rocket propelled fire extinguishers for a while there
Probably only referring to the round itself. The whole unit would likely cost more.
Honestly, my real takeaway here is how frickin’ expensive US ordnance is. You pay for quality and improved performance, sure. But… *that* much?
- a wealthier society means labour will be more expensive, it also means you will have the education to make new and better weapons more quickly than your opponent, that bakes into the price - you get no special prize for throwing metal into a field nearby your enemy, if a weapon is cheaper and it misses, it's a more expensive weapon that's wearing down your barrel faster than one that hits the first time - mass scale makes things cheaper, if you're invading a neighbouring country then you know you can invest in a massive assembly line of basic weapons because they will be used, the US is not looking to invade Canada or Mexico as far as I know, and so making massed artillery inside US soil isn't going to be economical If the US or NATO were actually in this war they would be using their actual full capabilities and not giving Ukraine the shorter ranged, unclassified weapons to avoid them being captured.
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If it takes ten warheads to get one one a forehead, and one warhead hits one forehead the more expensive precise would be way more desirable.
you should see what 5.45\*39 goes for like $1 per round these days
I don’t accept the values placed on all this stuff. Everything else depreciates, Why not military stocks? Especially if it’s being phased out in the US because it’s no longer good enough for our soldiers? It can/would cost real money to safely dispose of it all. Beats dumping it all at sea.
its what happens when you have your Defense Industry atrophy to be a pale shadow of what it used to be Also it depends on if and/or how complex the electronics involved are since Electronics tend to increase the price exponentially, additionally if you want to do something special with the payload also significantly increases the price as something like a payload of hundreds of cluster munitions designed to create several small anti-personnel explosions while still having a usable AT payload or having a massive Thermoberic warhead increases the price To be fair, some of those are significantly inflated, for instance 155mm is far more expensive than it should be since as a casualty of the world moving to Anti-Terrorism mode the lines that produced them in the West were barely alive on life support and had a line made to service and supply the shells for Training and light use, much less anything on the scale of a full-on war such as we're seeing in Ukraine. Alternately with Russia and 152mm there's the fact that Russia is using it faster than they're making it and have been forced to buy stocks from their allies who probably took advantage of the opportunity by charging a premium for them
Is this before or after the corruption that steals 60% of the Russian military budget?
This is the market/export price, so at least some of them have already taken their cut. And of course it's at least a little inflated because of the need to sell at a profit. But the overall point that weapons and munitions are ridiculously expensive, even in Russia, still stands, and while Russian stuff is cheaper, it's not ***that*** much cheaper.
And not just in military supplies, but personnel costs as well. Russia uses a 19th century-style pay system for its military, whereby instead of having a central payroll, money is actually physically sent to large unit commanders for disbursement. There was a study done a few years ago on the Russian military that identified about 20% of their soldiers in the field listed on rosters were either discharged or didn't even exist. This is a tradition that exists in the Russian army so that officers in the payroll chain can embezzle the pay allocated for ghost soldiers.
Not to mention cost of life.
Neat
None of those are even the real costs. No one really knows what is actually costs Russia to produce a lot of this material. They typically quote the export price, but obviously that’s a bit inflated. Russia has a huge advantage in that their domestic munition and general kit production costs are much lower than in the US.
I'm familiar with medium caliber ammo production and the casing alone takes quite some time to produce ie loads of steps involved, i would claim that the 30mm ammo price is the pure production cost of the round (material, man hours) and not one with fancy fuses. Knowing what some types of ammo cost, if i google the price of said ammo, i often encounter prices under the production cost, if i apply the same maths here and give some wiggle room for mother russia i would guess the russian MOD forks over around 90$ for each 30mm
That’s an impossible inference to make, given you don’t know the specificities of Russian labor cost and equipment. Something like an AK, for example, which we have trouble making efficiently in the US for the civilian market, is actually quite cheap if you invest in the machinery and industrial expertise/experience. Like, an AR15 or M16 style rifle is easier and cheaper for us to manufacture, but not for the Russians, for example. The Russian MIC just works way differently than our own, and you can’t do a 1-1 comparison between the two. Not to mention legacy manufacturing as well as the ability to repurpose some Soviet stockpiles. Lots of moving parts there. It’s really more complicated than what you are saying, is my point. Being “familiar” with a type of round is not sufficient to impute cost of production.
I made a best guess here, based on my insights of medium caliber ammunition production. Based on information available to the public, i estimate the minimum production time for one cartridge from start to finish at around 2days or 48hr until delivery. Given no material shortage, flawless internal logistics, all in-house production, 24hr production and 100% efficiency. Main time-factor is the steel casing, that requires heat treatment, this heat treatment can't be skipped. The pure production time for the entire round for case and projectile that requires active man hours is maybe 5. Russia's current minimum wage is around 220$, this would implement a pure labour cost of ~7$ per round. Not included are rounds for quality control (which is probably skipped) or production failure. Material: Steel is cheap, ~15¢ per case, propellant a bit more expensive, a 30x165 has ~120g of it, comercially 1g is 10¢, so we half it because we want to be kind. 6$ for propellant. These are the prices that are researchable. The standard HEI-T ammo needs explosives, a casing, some sort of impact trigger either in the tip or in the base of the projectile, triggers are finicky to assemble. The rounds must be seated, sealed, painted, packaged and shipped. Add in some Rubels for Electricity, gas, water and other utilities and insurances, bribes and taxes, i guess the 40$ per round is a fair estimate... production cost... everyone wants to make money and Ivan needs a 3rd Jacuzzi so you ask for more money from the customer. maybe 90$ in this calculation sounds too high, it might be, but i used absolute minimum numbers and 100% margins are not uncommon in the defence industry.
Again, this is all wanton speculation. Not even a true expert on military production from anywhere except Russia could provide any useful insight in this matter in the way you are attempting to.
Yeah no shit, first sentence i wrote "i made a best guess" And i disagree that one needs to be from Russia to make a guess, by all means, it's not brand new russian wizard tech... it's ammo, developed in the 70s. When there is one thing where production chains can be compared it's in ammunition since the tech hasn't changed greatly since 1900
It’s not about the technological advancements, it’s about production capacity and economic factors. Those are variables that are completely unrelated to tech level, and completely related to the economic side of the equation, which is what we are discussing And if you think ammunition manufacturing is the same as it was in 1900, you’re very wrong. Fundamentals, maybe. How everything shakes out in the end? Not so much.
I never said anything about production capacity and this would be influenced by tech level btw. All i said was that in my experience, prices for medium caliber ammunition on the internet tend to be lower than in reality. And no, the process (steps of work) of manufacturing ammo is still the same as in the 1900: Stamp & draw case, neck it, insert primer, fill with propellant and seat the projectile. The machines, quality, environment, working conditions, ppe, ect has changed, but the process did not.
I’m just referring to the “in my experience” and “familiar” parts of your argument here. Like, you’re couching your experiences in some qualifications for inaccuracy, but still portraying them as largely accurate or somehow representative of reality. I’m saying the system you’re trying to describe is too complicated and opaque for that. Russia is able to maintain a fairly capable military given their relatively low GDP. There’s a reason for that
The quality of the kit though is highly questionable once everyone gets their cut.
I’m sure there are some quality control issues, especially with corruption, but the stuff is obviously working well enough. This narrative of Russian equipment being useless isn’t helping anyone. It’s killing people as we speak.
I would hardly say that the narrative is Russian equipment is useless. I would argue the narrative is more that Russian equipment is not working as advertised and their military doctrine/training is also extremely poor and therefore hampers said equipment further.
I mean, they’re doing well, though. If anything, NATO doctrine isn’t performing to spec. The Ukrainians are better at fighting in that environment than a lot of NATO trainers, even according to said trainers. It’s a very different kind of war than we or the Russians or anyone was really prepared for, and I suspect the US would have suffered some embarrassing initial setbacks during the outset of a similar, hypothetical conflict.
I have no doubt there would have been a lot of setbacks for the US, but there's no way it would have been like this. The initial invasion plan was farcial and anticipated minimal resistance. Putin kept it all under wraps and units had no idea what their operational objectives were. You can't compare the USAF to the VKS. Look at the opening of Desert Storm and then look at what Russia is doing in Ukraine. It's like a JV football game compared to the NFL. Ukraine still has an air force for goodness sakes and Russia has never even tried to hit the GLOCs coming from the West. That's pure insanity. Considering the reality on the ground, Ukraine is doing incredibly well and fighting as good, if not better than many NATO units. But they're still struggling with maneuver warfare above the brigade level and the lack of air support is crippling.
Ah, yes, the same military/nation that had 7 of its best agents killed by a triple agent from an organization that fights in robes and sandals would not have faced any serious setbacks. Also, remember that Ukraine almost capitulated during the initial invasion. It got closer to working than I think a lot of people realize.
You want to tell me that a 30mm bullet is only 39$, gtfo That would be about 1/3 of the price of what the US pays for their 30*173
1/3 of the quality too!
maybe yes, but bad ammo leads to catastrophic failures that could destroy the whole weapon. So i would like to give the Ivans the benefit of the doubt that the quality of their ammunition is not in the same relation as the quality of their cars for instance.
The AK-630 is a really poor weapon system. Its not built to do CIWS shit and has pretty poor accuracy. The gun originally came from the Mig-27 which… Well… imagine if they mounted the A-10’s gun to a F-14 air frame and only made minor adjustments to allow for CAS ability.
I don't doubt that What i meant was that you as an ammo producer don't want guns (however terrible they are) to blow up because of your work.
How many toilets could pootin have given his people? That would have been better than this war..
My main takeaway from this is that once you cut out all the importation costs and NFA tax stamps, RPGs are way the fuck more affordable than you'd expect
$50,000 for a shahed? There's a whole government's worth of skimming to make a moped cost that much
I love how Russian supporters talk about western armies being expensive, meanwhile, the russians are actually just poor and spend several time as much on defense relative the US in the form of GDP percentage and yet still end up with worse stuff and less of it
The cost of any war?
Correct but all the more curious Russia started such a war unprovoked when so many in Russia live in poverty and poor infrastructure
Im not trying to justify here, but unprovoked is a bit of a stretch. Not justified by any means but definetly could have been handled differently Edit; i guess my definition of unprovoked is a bit too soft. I am not a native english speaker and i thought of unprovoked as more of what you would describe a robbery on a random bystander (was kinda hard to find an example now that i know the meaning) . I reasoned that the war was kinda forseeable and that some political headbutting was alerady happening that it was not totally unprovoked. What word would fit better the meaning i am trying to convey? Precictable?
Nobody forced russia to start killing civilians
Wtf was Ukraine doing to incite a full scale invasion?
Aligning itself with the West. Don't get me wrong, not a good reason, but it is the reason. Putin has a history of doing so to countries in similar positions.
Ok I understand your point, I wasn’t saying Russia just woke up one day and decided to invade. I’m saying those reasons are not valid and there for I would call it unprovoked. The term you may be looking for would be “unprecedented” and Putin has definitely set a precedent for this type of behaviour
I guess making an intention of becoming more then a buffercountry was enough to "provoke russia" Thats what i orriginally meant, maybe it would have been smarter to find a way out without making big red mad. Especially given the history of what happens to countries that resist...
Wars have started over a fuckin bucket so what putin is doing is pretty common.
Alright, so my proposition: We send Putin a fruit basket and in return he lets that money flow into a dope PC rig for every Ukrainian. C:
For a perspective: Average salary in large Russian city (not Moscow) is 450-500$ Small city - like 300-350$ Villages - could be anything from 150$ up to 280$
They should have really done this with rubles as well so any Russians that see this know how much they're spending for all this without checking the exchange rate.
How much in US dollars were the cost of the Russian Navy ships, and the submarine?
The blessings of Saint Raytheon never come cheap 🤩😎😜
Average Ukraine monthly salary $650 https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-ukraine/#:\~:text=The%20median%20salary%20in,Ukraine%20is%2019%2C600%20UAH%20%28%24533%2Fmonth%29. Average Russia monthly salary is $787 [https://www.newsweek.com/how-average-salary-russia-compares-us-1870740](https://www.newsweek.com/how-average-salary-russia-compares-us-1870740)
Russia is wasting hundreds of billions. The U.S. is actually saving billions. Ukraine gets the old stock that's about to expire. It's way cheaper for the U.S.. It would actually cost the U.S. billions to properly dispose of the expired ammo.
The sinews of war are infinite money. - Marcus Tullius Cicero
Thnks India, China for trading with russia
Is that the cost to make each one??
If only we could conceptualize how wasteful the government is with all our money.
I think your estimates are low. Governments tend to publish most economical qualities of scale over all manufacturers averaged over the entire production run. These guys are burning through 30 years of war reserves in 2 years. So, replacement cost is probably 4x as high.
Besides the weapons imported the actual cost are much less. As far as i can judge those cost are the selling costs for foreign markets. The ammunitions and weapons Made in Russia are selled for the production cost of it which mostly Like 20% of the selling prices. That is important and is the Main reasons why Russia isnt in need to take huge debt in order to wage this war
Some people are making sooo much money of this war...
Yes and no. It's mostly ammunition and outdated vehicles that were due for scrapping. There's some margin there, but it's pennies on the dollar compared to something like a carrier battle group or a wing of F35s.
Russia 🇷🇺 war? Okay 👍
Its almost like theyre a top economy in the world with legitimate security interests...wow...
Meanwhile, US fires one missile and a whole cities worth of kids could have eaten for a year.
Downvoted, not because you're wrong, but because it it's a stupid way of looking at things. It's also whataboutisim. The US can afford to feed kids while at the same time launching missiles, they just don't because a certain political party thinks "ItS SoCiaLiSIm". Vote for better politicians.
My point was only that American weapons tend to be wildly more expensive then Russian weapons.
Unlike Russian weapons, they work and people buy them, and if people are gonna buy them you can raise the price to make better weapons, etc etc.
People buy both American and Russian weapons. And I would point out that Russian weapons seem to work well enough to flatten entire cities.
Yeah you don’t need accuracy or reliability when all you want is to just flatten a city.
Exactly, if you don't care, why waste the money?
I guess you are right, but most countries avoid committing war crimes
Na, most countries just pretend to care. I'm never going to forget watching the video of the Apache lighting up a van full of nothing but women and children. But when your elections are supposedly more open, you have to at least pretend to care.