Twenty-eight thousand missiles for the American army – Le Temps

Twenty-eight thousand cruise missiles. This is the US Air Force’s acquisition target by 2031. This dizzying figure heralds a revolution in American acquisition processes. It marks the entry of the United States into the field ofaffordable mass“mass at an affordable cost”. Because the American Air Force only plans to spend “only” $428,000 per weapon, six times less than for a Tomahawk cruise missile, produced around 9,000 copies in forty years.

The need to regain mass is now recognized by all major Western armed forces. Indeed, force systems have been evolving, since the 1970s, around the paradigm of new information technologies: better sensors (satellites, radars) produce more relevant targeting information, which more modern effectors (latest generation fighter planes, guided munitions) translate into more effective kinetic actions. The beginnings began in 1972 in Vietnam: the US Air Force destroyed the Thanh Hóa bridge with a raid of 12 planes armed with laser-guided bombs, where four years previously more than 300 planes had failed, losing around ten of their own.