In fact, I’d argue there’s a systemic pressure to produce expensive weapons in artisanal batches. The only thing companies care about is maximizing profits. Producing cheap and reliable weapons in large volumes means low margins, needing warehouses to store them, hiring lots of workers for assembly lines, building factories, etc. It’s much better to build stuff like F35s that take a long time to design, then you produce a handful of them, and charge a huge maintenance contract for decades to come.
Oh yes, absolutely. The money is in moon shot projects that might not even bear any fruit at all. Like researching how to railgun when basic physics tells you those things break after 5 uses or indeed the clusterfuck that is the F35. I think the B2 stealth bomber was the first project of this kind and the corporations learned very well from it.
In fact, I’d argue there’s a systemic pressure to produce expensive weapons in artisanal batches. The only thing companies care about is maximizing profits. Producing cheap and reliable weapons in large volumes means low margins, needing warehouses to store them, hiring lots of workers for assembly lines, building factories, etc. It’s much better to build stuff like F35s that take a long time to design, then you produce a handful of them, and charge a huge maintenance contract for decades to come.
Oh yes, absolutely. The money is in moon shot projects that might not even bear any fruit at all. Like researching how to railgun when basic physics tells you those things break after 5 uses or indeed the clusterfuck that is the F35. I think the B2 stealth bomber was the first project of this kind and the corporations learned very well from it.