The majority of military hardware costs are bribes, kickbacks and margins. Nobody thinks that they will fight a real war in which they will need a lot of hardware.
If the US or Germany get in situation they need thousands of those - I guess their cost will fall to under 1M.
Do you have any evidence of this?
Also “and margins” seems like a stupid thing to add. Margins are high during peacetime and wartime alike. And it’s not parallel to bribes / kickbacks which are corrupt and illegal. Margins are the natural outcome of capitalism + monopoly.
Having S Korean competition means those margins would likely drop over time.
>Do you have any evidence of this?
I have been advisor to some people signing the deals. I would say that depending on the project in my slice of the industry at least 25-30% were outright redistributed to various stakeholders.
Confirmed. The second industry with such redistribution is oil and gas, 5-15%.
My figures are from ~2005.
Fun stories of hearing about key equipment gets caught up in Libyan customs. Weeks and weeks of meeting various officials, learning about each others families, drinking tea, etc, before 'the cost of compliance' is finally raised.
> Margins are high during peacetime and wartime alike
Countries with high margins during wartime don't typically win wars against peer powers. Cf nazi germany vs the soviet union. This is typically a luxury you see when rich countries fight poor ones (in absolute terms, including capital in the form of production capacity and tech IP/know-how)
> Margins are high during peacetime and wartime alike.
Perhaps when fighting foreign jaunts against a minnow. Preserving high margins in an grinding, existential war against a peer would be considered anything from unpatriotic, to outright illegal war profiteering, and carries a real risk of the shareholders losing control and/or ownership of the organization through various war-time instruments.
If the US is ever in that situation again we won't be measuring cost of any manufacturable thing in dollars
Correct it’ll be in Yen
> Nobody thinks that they will fight a real war in which they will need a lot of hardware.
Germany is literally thinking there will be war and getting ready for it. The war is more likely then 4 years ago.