US fired 1k JASSM cruise missiles in 37 days. Lockheed makes 396 per year | Hacker News Reader

US fired 1k JASSM cruise missiles in 37 days. Lockheed makes 396 per year

shatterbelt.co

55 pointsrealpolitik945 comments

    > If Lockheed dedicates the entire Troy, Alabama line exclusively to JASSM-ER and produces zero LRASM anti-ship missiles, the maximum rate is 860 per year. That drops the timeline to 2.2 years, but it means the Navy gets zero of the anti-ship missiles it would need for a Taiwan contingency.

China wins by literally doing nothing.

US losing on manufacturing, automobiles, renewables, human talent, global good will, etc.

This is a back of the envelope, not cognizant of all of the factors, estimate.

We don't know what the pacing item of the manufacturing is. It could be sub-assemblies from another company, raw materials, final assembly workers, facilities for final assembly, or a lack of capital to address these shortcomings.

Double the price you are willing to pay, and I bet the rate goes up a lot. You can build a new building in 6 months. In 90 days you can hire and train enough new workers for a third shift.

At the current demand, and the current sales price, and the current planned procurement's, that is all LM can make....

I have a saying I use with clients: "anything is possible with time and money".

Certainly, anything is possible. But this is a current and present risk if China were to make a move in the next month (if we agree that anything is possible). Author is saying "this is a clear and present risk", not that "this can't be solved with time and money".

we are in agreement.

what we don't know is what is the blocker? it maybe that LM is running at 10% capacity, with a lot of material in stock. a purchase order shows up, and they start a night shift next week.

may or may not be a dire situation. unless, as you mentioned, we need them next month.

That's the thing: this Iranian operation produced nothing of value for the United States but most definitely weakened our capabilities even if we say it is a temporary state until our supplies are replenished.

Trading a rook for a pawn makes sense if you can take a queen. But if you just trade a rook for a pawn...

Speak nothing of the waste of tax payer dollars and loss of Iranian civilian lives for this nothingburger.

  China wins by literally doing nothing.

Or to quote Napoleon, "never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake".

Yeah but the upside is that the elderly got to keep most of the federal tax revenue

i don't think this has much to do with the elderly

It certainly does.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generati...

    > About two-thirds of voters ages 18 to 24 (66%) associate with the Democratic Party, compared with 34% who align with the GOP.
    > About six-in-ten voters 80 and older (58%) identify with or lean toward the GOP, while 39% associate with the Democratic Party.

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-americans-vote-and-ho...

    > How does voting behavior differ by age?
    > In 2024, 47.7% of citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 voted, compared to 60.2% of 25- to 44-year-olds, 70.0% of 45- to 64-year-olds, and 74.7% of people 65 and older.

Older voters have higher turnout and skew heavily Republican.

Older voters didn't vote for war with Iran. Some will go along with the president for tribal reasons and what's left of american patriotism.

Defining things generationally is unnecessarily divisive: the people who have been relentlessly pushing for war with iran have names and addresses and have been doing so for 30 years.

I don't think you can not address it "generationally" The people who voted are absolutely getting what they voted for. None of this was not predicted before and during the election. I remember reading years ago that Trump wanted his second term to do the wanton things he couldn't before (like bludgeoning countries with the military). It was all out there.

It's past time to stop blaming a few warhawks "over there" Voters did this. Voters need to fix it

Trump ran on ending the war in ukraine in "a week" and never said anything about war with iran during his campaign.

The voters didn't and don't do shit: elites pick the two candidates, pay them both a bunch of money, buy congress and push through what they want. If Kamala were elected we'd be at war with iran just the same.

Stop blaming normies who have no power for what PNAC, etc have been pushing for for decades with real money.

Put my tax dollars to better use.

In 2025, BYD manufactured 2.2 million battery electric vehicles.

I only need one.

We're not at war with China.

Now you say that and it's an interesting assertion. The Chinese certainly will tell you that they are in a war. And will also say that America is in a war.

Americans a few years ago defined a "continuum of conflict" consisting of competition, crisis, and conflict (sometimes you see cooperation). America will tell you that we are in competition with China, which is a type of conflict.

We're not in a military war with them...yet (and maybe Trump would just let them take Taiwan; who knows).

We are definitely in an economic "war" with them, basically outright banning their automotive industry from gaining a foothold in the US and doing things like pressuring Nvidia to limit exports to them.

yeah, so Apple and Ford should hire mercenaries to defend Taiwan. Not our military.

And if we are in "economic war" then bring manufacturing back to the rust belt. Give people good-paying wages again. Stop sending empty containers across the ocean when we are pressured about "climate change". Notice how the Epstein class never gets implored to change their status quo. But we need to drive EVs or else the polar bears drown.

    > By September 2016, Lockheed Martin had delivered 2,000 total JASSMs [...] to the USAF. [0]

So probably another 1k plus all production of the last 10 years is all that's left in stock.

Nothing to see here, moving along.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-158_JASSM

More: They produce 396 a year when they already have 20 times that number in stock. If they don't have 20 times that number in stock, can they produce more per year? As CharlieDigital noted, yes, they can, though at the price of lower or no production of LRASM missiles.

The Chinese YKJ-1000 is reported to cost $99000 per unit, is hypersonic and has a range of ~1300 KM.

It's looking like the US needs some disruption on their armament suppliers, kinda what SpaceX did for space launches.

Compare that to the 1.5M each of the JASSM cost.

Thus far Chinese weaponry has not shown to be as effective as promised. Maybe this YKJ-1000 is the exception, maybe it is not. Maybe exported versions of the weaponry have been crippled in some way, maybe not. The future will tell. The future, also, which I expect to bring down the price of western weaponry, probably not as low as the Chinese equivalents but closer to those than to those demanded by the old defence dinosaurs.

What's your source for this? There isn't really a lot of credible, publicly available information on what you're saying... just anecdotes. In the India v. Pakistan conflict recently a French produced Indian Rafale was downed via a Chinese long range air-to-air missle (PL-15) from a a Chinese produced J-10 jet. Even if they don't have the same hit rate, you can buy 10x for the same price.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/how-pakis...

Even if that's the case, it may be possible to make it up in sheer numbers. That's a 15 to 1 ratio. You can throw 15 missiles for the same price than 1.

Even if they're 10% effective compared to the expensive ones, you may still have the advantage.

You need to be able to launch those missiles which requires some platform to do so. If this happens to be a ground-based platform is will be detected directly upon launch of the first missile and targeted for destruction. It better be an agile mobile platform like e.g. the Archer artillery system or it will probably not launch more than a single missile. If the platform is airborne it will have a limited carrying capability which partly negates the mentioned 15 to 1 ratio.

And a Shahed with the same range costs $30k or so.

U.S. is burning through Tomahawk cruise missile stockpile

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619879

US Burned 14 Years of Missiles in 30 Days

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619701

I'm not saying the Trump administration is compromised/influenced/managed by Russia but if they were I don't see what they'd be doing differently.

Then taking down the Maduro regime and the Iranians who are both Russian allies, arming Ukraine, and enabling out-of-theater sinking of Russian ships?

    > ...and the Iranians

Russia is playing both sides of this. They're able to continue to deepen the dependency precisely because Iran has few allies while also raising the price of crude oil to enrich their coffers. A few Iranian lives are nothing to them. All you have to do is to look at the other side of this: if Iran were to open up and be integrated into the world, who loses? Russia.

    > ...arming Ukraine,

It certainly appears that you've been in a bunker.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-trumps...

    > The White House said that the U.S. is "pausing and reviewing" its Ukraine aid to "ensure that it is contributing to a solution." The order will remain in effect until Trump determines that Ukraine has demonstrated a commitment to peace negotiations with Russia.
    > 
    > The decision comes days after an explosive meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance said that Ukraine's leader hasn't expressed sufficient gratitude for American support.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/04/us-military-ai...

    > The Trump administration has suspended delivery of all US military aid to Ukraine, blocking billions in crucial shipments, as the White House piles pressure on Kyiv to sue for peace with Vladimir Putin.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/04/europe/russia-ukraine-militar...

    > Russia welcomes Trump’s cut to Ukraine’s military aid

Out of $188B of authorized aid for Ukraine, $109B has been disbursed incl 2025/2026 deliveries, with an additional $72B continuing to be disbursed per original timeline.

https://www.cfr.org/articles/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine

You have to get at least the most basic facts correct. If you get even those wrong, you need to throw out your entire worldview and the sources that generated that worldview and start over.

    > You have to get at least the most basic facts correct

Seems like you need to get the facts correct. From your own source:

    > Since Trump assumed office in January 2025, there has been no legislation or other authorizations of significant new aid to Ukraine. However, a substantial amount of the aid **appropriated under the Biden administration** is still in the pipeline, and deliveries of aid packages have continued, although on two occasions **the Trump administration temporarily paused some deliveries...Nonetheless, the lack of new aid commitments means that U.S. aid deliveries are running out**.
    > 
    > After some initial restrictions, the Biden administration eventually permitted Ukraine to use ATACMS to strike inside Russian territory. **The Trump administration initially blocked use of the missiles in 2025, though Ukraine announced their use later in the year. The Trump administration considered providing Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, as requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but ultimately chose not to do so**.

Look carefully at the first graphic and notice when those 5 aid bills were signed into law. I'll give you a hint: before Trump assumed office in January 2025.

What's your position? That Trump is sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause and has been a great supporter and ally of Ukraine?

    > You need to throw out your entire worldview and the sources that generated that worldview and start over.

Maybe you should start by reading your sources first.

Madurismo without Maduro.

Ukraine? Sure, after extorting them for campaign help (minerals later) while Russians murdered their families.

And we're not "enabling" the sinking of any Russian ships.

Venezuela has bulk freed their political prisoners and is on track to hold elections.

And I think you will find Ukraine lacks the necessary satellite constellations to enable very long distance corrected boat strikes. Yet strangely Ukraine has suddenly been successfukly performing trajectory corrected boat strikes.. at very long distances.. Seemingly launched from not Ukraine.

Or maybe Russian oil terminals just keep magically catching fire... along with their ships.. You know, the ones the US didn't interdict.

Could be. Could be.

PURL/SACEUR as I understand it, no?

We're not enabling the sinking of Russian ships. Your facts are off. It shouldn't be difficult to see that this administration has no interest in preserving democracy or allies.

Yes, it was Putin that was walking into DC every other month demanding the US strike Iran...

Maybe it's not a question of if the administration is compromised, but rather who is doing the compromising. Hell why can't it be both?

Yes, the infamous Russia lobby who spends lavishly on virtually every sitting congress member's campaign[0]. The Russian oligarchs who donated 100 million on Trump's reelection[1]. It's all so obvious.

[0] https://www.trackaipac.com/congress [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/us/politics/miriam-adelso...

There's ways to influence useful idiots besides lobbying.

Yeah, like pretending that they don’t see an elephant in the room, but Putin in every shadow.

Good. They were sunk costs.

This opens it up for newer ideas - the age of hideously expensive missiles is over.

Only if you're a nation with few resources or in emergency situation.

Creativity in the US military as always been associated with a lot of $ for contract with the private sectors.

Yes, many countries are now using cheap drones to destroy targets but I'm not sure the US military has the mentality to adapt to this situation because they're not "really" at war.

How would highly ranked personnel react to the idea of a 400$ drone, cheaper than an AR15, when they usually discuss budgets about aircraft carriers (or a few 100$million F35) ?

I wonder how many potential contractors would add a 0 to the price just to be taken seriously.

They'd just add a zero to the quantity to be delivered instead.

Drones are bullets, not delivery systems like aircraft carriers and machine guns.

The US military already deploys a copy of the Iranian Shahed drone. They aren't $400 but the Shahed isn't that cheap either.

I would argue that drones are at least one level higher than a bullet, maybe something like a Carl Gustav round.

I guess they got rid of bunch of rockets with near expiration date

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