I worked in HAWK missiles in the Marine Corps for many years. This doesn’t surprise me one bit. In 1994, Block II launchers were still effectively using vacuum tubes. In fact, I still recall the one that faulted the most, from its label in the FM: relay K-9! Ninety-percent of launcher issues were attributed to that old relic of a tube.
Then, in 1995, Raytheon came out with Block III updates, which replaced the entire trunk filled with hardware (about as crowded as a standard engine bay of a modern car) with about 3 PC graphics cards-sized modules, each with an NSN price tag of $170,000 per (don’t worry, you’re paying for the IP, not the physical cards themselves, which iirc were MIL-spec versions of your standed PCI card from back then).
Made my job as a tech so easy, since the launchers never really broke down much after that, save for a hydraulic leak or two out in Dugway or White Sands during a shoot or Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB. Didn’t see aliens out there but quite a lot of Soviet gear, which we acquired shortly after the USSR’s downfall. MiGs are really cool and reliable, though pilot/user comfort/convenience was not on their MVP list.
If I've understood Wikipedia correctly, what it's calling "Phase 2" of the Hawk missile program [0] is when some vacuum tubes were replaced.
There are 12 countries (including some rich ones) listed as using the Phase 1 upgrade of the missile, which is presumably still full of vacuum tubes [1]. This is the 30 year old upgrade to a missile developed 60 years ago.
not really - how many software and hardware engineers do you think you need for this? probably minimum 10, maybe 20-30 realistically. At SV salaries (you need the best engineers, right?) that's $9m USD/annum.
You need to ship at least 50 of these devices to break even. To get a proper margin and cover all the other costs (manufacturing, sales, marketing, compliance, accounting, yada), you're probably going to need to create and sell a couple hundred, every year.
One other thing is that launchers and other boxes that control weapons are DAL-A equivalent, so you have to be rigorous about your requirements and testing to ensure that a missile never accidentally fires. This drives up development costs as well, since you have to do a lot more work to verify and validate the system.
It depends what you mean by "SV salaries" but defense contractor developers can make a lot of money, especially compared to other software jobs in the NOVA/Maryland area (which are not paid nearly as well as SV).
Then, in 1995, Raytheon came out with Block III updates, which replaced the entire trunk filled with hardware (about as crowded as a standard engine bay of a modern car) with about 3 PC graphics cards-sized modules, each with an NSN price tag of $170,000 per (don’t worry, you’re paying for the IP, not the physical cards themselves, which iirc were MIL-spec versions of your standed PCI card from back then).
Made my job as a tech so easy, since the launchers never really broke down much after that, save for a hydraulic leak or two out in Dugway or White Sands during a shoot or Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB. Didn’t see aliens out there but quite a lot of Soviet gear, which we acquired shortly after the USSR’s downfall. MiGs are really cool and reliable, though pilot/user comfort/convenience was not on their MVP list.