Cheap munitions sometimes explode before they are launched, killing crews and destroying platforms.
Cheap munitions mean that CAS is a roulette. You waited for ten minutes for a support fire mission? Sorry, wait for ten more, whatever we launched has failed. Or maybe you're dead because the munition has hit you instead.
Cheap munitions can pin you down. Those cheap FPV drones that are supposedly cheaper than Javelins require dedicated immobile units to launch and guide to targets. Javelins are organic to infantry squads.
Cheap munitions are either very expensive or impossible. There's no cheap anti-ballistic missile and no cheap missile that can sink a warship in the Taiwan strait when launched[*] from Guam.
[*]: alright alright an LRASM would need to be flown closer by an F-35 but the point still stands
It means doubling the transport capacity, but not doubling the burden. A bunch of crates carrying 155mm shell (cheap munitions) is much easier logistically than a PAC-3 missile for the same weight.
> Cheap munitions sometimes explode before they are launched, killing crews and destroying platforms.
Ill designed/manufactured munitions do, but it's not proportional to cost (again, a 155mm shell is a cheap munition even though it's being manufactured and designed in a way to reduce the kind of risk you're talking about).
> Cheap munitions mean that CAS is a roulette. You waited for ten minutes for a support fire mission? Sorry, wait for ten more, whatever we launched has failed.
That's not how it works. You'd launch two at the same time to take the possibility of failure into account (in fact we already do that with expensive anti-air missiles).
> Or maybe you're dead because the munition has hit you instead
Every munition can do a blue on blue strike, we mitigate those through engagement rules, which are calibrated by weapon types.
> Cheap munitions can pin you down. Those cheap FPV drones that are supposedly cheaper than Javelins require dedicated immobile units to launch and guide to targets.
They don't "require" it, it's how they are being employed today in Ukraine. Notice that javelins have pretty much disappeared from the Ukrainian battlefield so it's really not a good comparison.
> Cheap munitions are either very expensive or impossible. There's no cheap anti-ballistic missile
And it's fine to use an expensive weapon for that reason. Nobody is saying no to all expensive weapons (nukes ain't cheap either).
> no cheap missile that can sink a warship in the Taiwan strait when launched[] from Guam. > []: alright alright an LRASM would need to be flown closer by an F-35 but the point still stands
A Magura isn't a missile, but it has shown its capability of completely shutting down the Black Sea Fleet.
Which is my point, doubling the capacity at the end of the spear is more than double the burden. The scale is superlinear. The further out the front is (for the US, it's over at least one ocean), the more superlinear the scaling is.
> but it's not proportional to cost
You might've heard of the cheap North Korean shells exploding in barrels, destroying Russian howitzers. It is indeed very disproportional, that's why spending severalfold on better shells is a great tradeoff.
> You'd launch two at the same time to take the possibility of failure into account
It depends on the ability to launch two. Oftentimes it's impossible; cheap FPV drones interfere with each other, or maybe you don't have double the planes to fly CAS.
> how they are being employed today in Ukraine
It's logistically impossible to employ the kind of drones Ukraine is employing on the go and organically to infantry. Features and CONOPS that enable organic employment lead to a substantial increase in per-unit prices, see Rogue 1.
> A Magura isn't a missile, but it has shown its capability of completely shutting down the Black Sea Fleet.
It's three Black Seas worth of distance between Guam and the Taiwan strait. On top of that, nowadays those boats are pretty effectively countered. Overindexing on the war in Ukraine would be a mistake.
