In the back room of an arms dealer in Peshawar, the prices are on display without fuss: $2,500 for a second-hand Kalashnikov, $1,000 for a Glock pistol on the black market. Much the same as the prices among the 30,000 weapons circulating illegally in France, where people talk of €250 to €2,000 for the famous Kalash and €400 to €1,000 for a .357 Magnum or a .451617.
Sums that would almost make you smile next to the prices in the official catalogues of the arms makers I have been able to see, one of them recently presented at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget (to insiders only). Some manufacturers have glossy brochures that look like a car dealer’s, but for most of them it’s mainly Excel spreadsheets with product codes. And a lot of zeros. These people are truly hopeless at marketing…
Because modern war is now counted in millions, and technological inflation turns every conflict into a financial black hole.
Take the basic American soldier. His M4, the assault rifle that has equipped Uncle Sam’s forces for decades, costs the taxpayer €5,100 apiece. Small change compared with what awaits him on the modern battlefield.
Because the economic absurdity shows itself in all its glory with missiles. An American Javelin anti-tank missile? $263K a unit until 2023 and $350K now, according to a confidential internal Lockheed Martin document. The Stinger, the olive-green tube that has been making helicopter pilots tremble since Afghanistan in the 1980s, now carries a $745K price tag. Quite some inflation for a missile billed at $25K in the 1990s, then $400K in 2023.
AMRAAM air-to-air missiles are not far behind, at a million dollars minimum and up to $2.4M depending on the version. A Tomahawk cruise missile? $1-1.5M vaporised in a few minutes of flight.
Faced with this price escalation, some countries are looking for alternatives. The British NLAW anti-tank missile, at only $33K, proves you can still destroy a tank without mortgaging a generation’s future.
On land, the inflation is no less spectacular. The Abrams M1A2 tank, a 70-tonne steel monster and the pride of the US Army, costs up to $47M in its SEPv3 version, the annual budget of a small American town. Even in the economy-plus export version, you are still looking at $8-19M depending on the batch and the options. Air con not included. The Germans stay more reasonable with their Leopard 2A7: €6-10M. The Bradley, the infantry fighting vehicle that looks like a smaller tank, costs several million. As for HIMARS, the multiple rocket launcher that became the star of the war in Ukraine, you need $5.6M to treat yourself to one. All of that without ammunition, obviously.
And once you take to the skies, prices reach stratospheric heights. France’s Rafale fighter jet, the pride of Dassault, sits between $100M and $125M. Its American rival, the F-35 Lightning II, comes in at around $85M for the basic version, which, as we have known for a while now, the Americans can ground remotely.
Extract from US Army procurement budgets
Next to these financial behemoths, the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone looks like a low-cost revolution at only $5M. A price that has allowed Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Libya to buy themselves a modern air-strike capability without bankrupting their treasuries. The Reaper, a more sophisticated American equivalent at $15-20M, stays in the affordable bracket for combat drones.
But catalogue prices only tell part of the story. Because modern war is also a logistical orgy that devours budgets. $1M a day to keep a single battalion supplied with fuel in the Iraqi or Afghan desert. 70% of the American logistics budget literally going up in smoke, on fuel and maintenance. Not to mention the massive use of private contractors: Blackwater, KBR, DynCorp... These mercenaries in suits and ties bill their services at 3 to 5 times the cost of a regular soldier for similar missions.
Outsourcing war has become a lucrative business. When the US military subcontracts security, logistics or even certain operations to private companies, the bill explodes. That’s the price of war “without American deaths”, in theory at least, but with extra zeros on the cheques.
And then there is the invisible war, the one fought in cyberspace. Ukraine and Russia are pouring tens of millions into their armies of hackers. No unit price for a cyberattack, no missile to count, but budgets swelling in the shadows to wage cognitive warfare, launch ransomware and orchestrate disinformation. A financial war of attrition that exhausts states without a single shot being fired.