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The US can make a 210 MW reactor, cram it in a submarine (with oodles of advanced stealth/sonar/missile technology) for about $2 billion. They can produce one such submarine every year. Or in the Nimitz class, they install two 550 MW reactors in a floating city/airbase/fortress for a grand total of $5 billion. The reactors surely can't be that much of the overall cost, 20% at most. The missiles and gadgetry are far more complicated, the guidance and computers are the expensive parts.
Small footprint nuclear reactors are proven technology, they've been made for decades. The US chooses not to administrate civilian nuclear energy competently, there's no technical problem. This is 1960s technology, at most. There's nothing all that sophisticated about nuclear energy, even breeder reactors.
Computers aren't at all expensive anymore in the grand scheme of things.
In the 1960s they custom-built a computer to send people to the moon. In the 1980s you could buy a more powerful computer for kids to play games on for a few hundred dollars. By now you can buy a much more powerful computer on a tiny chip for 30-40 cents.
Those are civilian general-purpose computers, military tech has to use hardened tech against EMPs, they need special secret software and configurations, electronic countermeasures and counter-countermeasures. Can't exactly go to Taiwan, the chips are supposed to be made in the USA for supply chain security... It's super complicated.
t. Lockheed Martin shareholder
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You obviously haven't seen how effective Lockheed is at blowing up the cost of things.
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