Q: With the U.S. Navy launching 59 cruise missiles on Syria, I was wondering how much 59 cruise missiles cost? I saw an amount of a million dollars each a while back, but I have seen other figures of twice as much, and one report of “up to several million dollars apiece.” Have the Navy and Air Force said how many cruise missiles we have left in stockpile?
—Tim Conner, Austell
A: The U.S. Navy says the procurement costs for the Tomahawk in 2016 were a little over a million dollars each.
“It’s a little complicated, because it depends on how many we buy at a time. If we buy more, it typically costs less; but our procurement costs in 2016 were $1.09 million per unit,” Lt. Kara Yingling, a spokeswoman with the Navy Office of Information, told Q&A on the News.
Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank based in Washington, D.C., recently tweeted that a replacement cost for the launched Tomahawks would be around $89 million, which equates to $1.5 million each.
A Defense News report in February 2016 mentioned that Raytheon Co., which builds the missiles, estimated that adding moving target capabilities to the Tomahawk would tack on about $250,000 to the cost of the estimated $1.1 million missile.
Yingling said she could not share inventory numbers. The U.S. Air Force did not respond to information requests.
Fast Copy News Service wrote this column; Katie Tiller contributed. Do you have a question? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404-222-2002 or email q&a@ajc.com (include name, phone and city).
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