$100 million for a combat plane, $25 million for a tank, $1 billion for a frigate… Western armaments have reached pharaonic prices in recent years, forcing armies to reduce their formats and their fleets, to be endowed.
But what, really, is this empirical observation? Are arms prices today really higher than they were a few decades ago, once the inflation parameter is included? And does this increase in the price of arms apply uniformly to different equipment and to different countries?
To answer these questions, as well as to identify their causes and the consequences on the operational capabilities of the armies, a methodical analysis is required. And, who knows, perhaps it will bring out unexpected findings?
In this section:
Augustine's Law and the inexorable increases in defense equipment costs
In 1978, Norman R. Augustine, former Under Secretary of State forU.S. Army from 1975 to 1977, and who would be president of Lockheed Martin in the late 1990s, made a prediction that became famous under the name Augustine's Law.
« If the Pentagon's methods and cost trends do not change, the Pentagon's budget around 2050 will be used to purchase a single tactical aircraft. This will be entrusted three days a week to the US Air Force, three days to the US Navy and one day to the US Marines Corps. »
Fortunately, this prediction will not come true. Well, not quite. Indeed, at the same time, the Pentagon's budget, for its part, has been multiplied by 11, going from $83 billion in 1970, in the middle of the Vietnam War, to $877 billion in 2022, i.e. more than the 810%. of inflation experienced by the United States from 1970 to this date.
However, according to the current Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, the new US Air Force fighter, from the NGAD program, will cost several hundred million dollars per copy, the price of a hundred F4s. Phantom II, in 1970, the US Air Force's benchmark heavy fighter until the mid-70s, and the arrival of the first F-15s.
But this race for technological performance, which has led to these uncontrolled price increases, seems to have reached, today, its threshold of sustainability. Thus, the US Air Force put the NGAD program in a state of stasis, the time, according to the official speech, to assess the relevance of the paradigms used until then for the design of these 6th generation combat aircraft, while Chinese competition seems to be rolling out a much better controlled, and very effective, military industrial program. .
It would therefore be interesting, in this matter, to study precisely the evolution of the prices of different defense equipment, based on the prices of the flagship equipment families of the three major global arms exporters, to understand the causes. , and, perhaps, mitigate the harmful consequences.
From 1970 to 2020, the price of arms has increased fivefold in the West
To do this, it is appropriate to list the prices of some of the American, French and Russian equipment, flagships of this period, and to determine the price compensated for inflation in 2020, to determine the real increase, excluding macroeconomic developments. of their countries of origin.
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At the same time, and more than ever, it is not the value of a good that determines its price, but rather the financial capacity of the buyer.
And unfortunately not only for armaments.
Very interesting article, isn't it good to wonder if this technological bias of Western countries is not also an excuse for manufacturers to artificially inflate prices by taking advantage of major programs over several decades and with budgets varying regularly? It may be a bit “conspiratorial” but I ask this question.
Hello, great demonstration, again, your articles are edifying and questioning... an update on our Rafale and SCAF aircraft. If the Rafale 5 is capable of managing light or heavy drones, from 2030, what is the point of going for a hyper-heavy aircraft (SCAF), probably hyper-expensive which may be useless in 2040/45 given the speed of obsolescence of the equipment.
hmmm…
Thank you) The question indeed arises. You can read these two articles from 2023, which analyze the subject. Since then, SCAF has come out of the short-term rut, so it's worth keeping in mind that these two articles are two years old.
https://meta-defense.fr/2023/08/30/rafale-f5-scaf-besoins-france/
https://meta-defense.fr/2023/03/07/standard-rafale-f5-evoluer-super-rafale/
The Scaf has gotten out of the rut, that's for sure, but the technological target remains more or less clearly defined. It seems that the Rafale F5, apart from the evolution of the platform, will have developed all the technologies that we expect from the Scaf in terms of connectivity. So the cost of the Scaf itself could be lower.
Moreover, no one knows how the Chinese arms acquisition policy will evolve. They are still riding a wave of very strong growth, but they will be faced with the same aging problems that we are, which could lead to the same risk aversion. We'll see.
That is the whole problem. No one is able today to anticipate the operational and technological future beyond ten years, as the subject is evolving so quickly. This is all the more so since there is a risk, although this is not guaranteed, that China will take the upper hand and, soon, that it will be China, and no longer the United States, that will define the Tempo in the years to come.
In this context, programmes that span 15 or 20 years, such as SCAF or MGCS, are very likely to fall short and, like NGAD today, have to go through a phase of complete redefinition, which will cause delays and additional costs.
It is precisely because of this uncertainty, and not so much because of the Franco-German imbalance which depends mainly on questions of point of view, that I am today very doubtful about these two programmes.