is it any wonder we are going broke in this country when we are still spending $30000 a year to power one computer that probably has 1/2 the computational power of an iphone?
I doubt that less convoys will equal fewer attacks - it's just an accounting quirk that the casualties are apportioned to the fuel. The attacks might be less successful, as you won't be spreading the defence so thin, but you wouldn't get a linear reduction in costs.
This is very much BIG iron, not ancient iron.
The first mainframe I used, more than 25 years ago, had about a hundred 3278's connected to it. And it was still fast for interactive use when compared to the 8-bit computers of its day. This Z9 was probably commissioned after 2005.
The difference is one of licensing -- IBM charges less for activating a core if you can only run java|db2|linux on it.
They may actually put an accelerator in the system at some point in the future, but for now it's just a way of using more processors without spending as much.
That's the thing everyone has forgotten.