Cruise missiles still costing multiple millions each is a rip off of American taxpayers. Weapon systems is a market ripe for “creative destruction” and you’re, ever so slowly, starting to see it with companies like Anduril.
I'm rooting for Anduril and more competition but it also sounds like typical techie naivete thinking nobody else knows what they're doing and missiles are multi millions for no reason.
The reason is profit. Until proven otherwise there is no reason to assume anything else.
If it's profit then why would Anduril be immune?
Same reason that Amazon was cheap and good until it became dominant.
Anduril sells missiles like the Barracuda-M (1/10 the warhead of a Tomahawk missile, and reduced range) for north of $200k. Very similar payload delivery price, that isn't actually a cheaper alternative. Arguably many targets don't require a 500kg warhead and in those cases a much smaller and cheaper missile would do the trick just fine, and if it can be produced much faster and benefit from economy of scale, even better, but at the end of the day they're just as much looking to make as much profit as possible as everyone else (everything for the shareholders).
Prices will come down if there's more competition and the contract awards are distributed better across the board. Like right now Boeing got the contract for BOTH of the 6th Gen fighters for the Navy and Air Force.