That MOAB Bomb Dropped On Afghanistan Actually Cost $170,000

[madokie]

The United States Air Force dropped a 21,600-pound Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB, bomb on what it said were ISIS militants in Afghanistan on Thursday. At least 36 people were killed in the explosion from the largest American non-nuclear bomb.

But beyond the human cost, there was a debate about the financial price. And it isn’t as much as everyone was saying.

Valerie Irinna, the air warfare reporter for Defense News, managed to snag the scoop from an Air Force source directly:

And $170,000 per unit is a lot cheaper than some of the numbers being bandied about, ranging anywhere from $16 million to a whopping $314 million.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/that-moab-bomb-dropped-on-afghanistan-actually-cost-17-1794343571

[Warpy]

1. Delivery on target is what drives the price up

I notice there is very little word on what it accomplished, if anything.

[madokie]

2. So far all I see

is it changed the dialog from tRump/russia

[jberryhill]

4. I thought that was the whole point of Amazon Prime

[Orrex]

11. But you still can't watch OITNB on it.

[PoliticAverse]

3. I'm not believing any of these numbers until I see a receipt. n/t

[Mendocino]

5. At that cost

this weapon would be $8 a pound. Don't know the price, but I imagine the H-6 alone would be far more than that.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. I'm skeptical. When you can gouge The Pentagon for anything you make, the

price seriously goes up. $170,000 doesn't even pay for the plans being sketched.

[madokie]

7. The story I read says they build that bomb themselves

not some outside supplier

But who knows

[mitch96]

8. I think the cost came down

After the rage on social media and the internets.. Like the body count it's just a way to control the narrative. We try to poke'em in the eye and they move the eye... If past lies are an indication of future information...... I don't trust them...
m

[Igel]

10. The cost came down because they changed the basis of the accounting.

Stage 1: The program cost something like $314 million. 20 bombs were produced. The price of each bomb was $314 million / 20. It's simplistic and foolish to do this, but it gave the Really Big Number that we so craved.

Of course, the quibble is it was the first bomb that really required all the overhead. The second bomb just required minimum expenses for materials and labor. Yes, that's snarky, but since the entire claim is a giant festering mound of snark, I figure my few tons won't even be noticed.

Stage 2: The bomb's real cost is just the actual cost of producing that particular bomb. Bam: A much reduced number, since most of the bomb is made of really cheap materials.

This is the flip side. The craving to find a Truly Small Number. It's simplistic and just as simple-minded.

The program's cost included more than the cost of making the bomb. It included administrative oversight, design costs, all sorts of things that are pretty much one-time expenses.

Quibble from another set of loons: Well, it certain took the cost of the plane to fly the thing there and drop it. (Of course, that would be true if we lobbed condoms or Hershey bars at them, but we still crave that Really Big Number. The cheap thing would be to let them stay there and impose a regime that makes the Taliban look like furries at a tolerance convention. "We saved $3 billion dollars, and it only cost us 300 000 dark-skinned Muslims!" Got offense?)

You see business playing the same game, with more refinement. "This drug cost $900 million to discover, test, and start producing." "No, it didn't. That's including $300 million for failed attempts unrelated to this drug. Moreover, the actual cost of the pill is 8 cents, if you leave out the cost of the equipment, benefits for the employees, the cost of the building, and just look at the employees' wages for the time spent producing it and the raw materials." At least when business tries to recoup costs they amortize the start-up expense over the expected production run, not just the first 20 pills, and that has some justification. Either way, we like the number our argument requires, not the one that makes sense given all the facts.

Stage 3: Somehow factor in some of the overhead and design costs in a reasonable way. Those people would have been employed doing something--that's the thing about using permanent staff for short-term projects, the cost-accounting basis the government uses can lead to goofball results. The production facilities also existed ahead of time. It could be called back into production fairly quickly and additional production would need pretty much no start-up expense. But that's attempting a reasonable number, and reason is treated the same way a pollen grain is in somebody suffering from extreme allergic reactions.

[dalton99a]

9. It was designed and manufactured at Eglin AFB in Fla. and loaded at McAlester Army Ammunition Plant

in Okla.

Transportation from FL to OK was "under a tarp on a rented flatbed truck":

http://newsok.com/article/5545469

[kentuck]

12. I am skeptical of that report.

If the Tomahawk missile cost $1.2 million, I cannot imagine the MOAB costing less.