Hacker News Reader

Comment by memoriesofsmell | Hacker News Reader

It's not just the cost of a GPS chip, it's the custom turbofan engine, the other guidance system components, active radar (in some units) and a guarantee that you can keep the unit in a tube for years and ensure that it's gonna work when you need it.

Plus low volume production volums and long times needed to manufacture it.

Could it be cheaper? Yeah I'm sure. But the US Gov is willing to pay for em so why drop the price?

View on HN

A tomahawk has a good INS, which is still expensive, and it has to be able to sit for years in a tube getting banged around with the waves, and launch on a moments notice.

That’s not to say that it should cost 2.5 million, but Ukraine doesn’t need storability and durability because I think they pretty much get driven from the factory to the launch site in a matter of days.

There's not some expensive magic to do that. They buy military grade chips and that's it. Any vendor can make the same with the same promise.

I don't know exactly what the state of the art is now in MEMS gyros, but I'm pretty sure the tomahawk uses mechanical or ring laser gyros. Those systems are expensive.

For the reliability/storability parts though, the electronics are probably the least of the issues. You've got a jet engine in there that needs fuel, oil, and has a number of high speed moving parts. Having something like that sit for years in a ship and work with high reliability is not so simple.

What seems to be happening is that Ukraine, which has a rocket industry from the Soviet era, is building such missiles, and, through a quiet deal with Taiwan, the electronics is provided.[1] This is not a secret but nobody talks about numbers.

[1] https://ipdefenseforum.com/2026/01/taiwan-looks-to-partner-w...

Lucky they didn’t buy from the US. Some tech billionaire would have found a way to shut it down.

Or some elected government leader.

US military procurement regulations keep companies like GlobalFoundries alive. No alternative for critical chips from some of their legacy nodes (at least none that can be certified within years, obviously the chips themselves are very far from cutting edge).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com