Most cost effective weapon

Yes....but there's the killer - "massed" rifle fire See under the need to train an ARMY of t'buggers LOL

 

You can train an army of guys to shoot adequately, or at least in sufficient volume. Training them to shoot superbly takes more time and trouble. We are all familiar with the high standard of musketry in the 1914 BEF, which took years of experience and training to achieve. I don't know what musketry training was like in the Turkish Army, but their rifle fire at Gallipoli was very heavy and deadly (they didn't have many MGs in the early stages). But I fear we are going astray from the purpose of this thread.

As to what guys have been saying about mortars...yes, I agree. They are not terribly expensive or complex (the Vietminh even built them in jungle workshops during their war with the French), but very effective.

 

Good training itself, maybe.

Not a glossy expense, but something that quite possibly pays/paid more dividends than most other military expenses, while not necessarily using up so much of the materiel required for actual fighting.
Better-organised, better-led men have always held a special threat over even the most relatively luxuriously equipped opponents.

 

How about the Papier-Mâché drop tanks the British used to extend fighter range. Hard to get cheaper than that.

 

How about the humble tooth brush or sulfa meds, hygiene, food,?

 

Sulfa meds? How about penicillin? Hugely effective and allowed for the first time for a soldier to have a decent chance of surviving a gut wound! However Penicillin is a tool, not a weapon. Weapon denotes the ability to kill and harm. Otherwise, we could nominate GI bore cleaner, C-rations or even condoms!

 

Helmets were effective and readily plentiful. Mass produced for almost every soldier for both sides. I wouldn't exactly call them a weapon but they were usually ways of saving lives and protecting them.

 

Is a delivery system the actual weapon, or is it the ordinance it delivers.
Hope that makes sense. Don't want to look stupid.
doh

 

Well...my interpretation is that for a bomb the delivery system would be the plane which delivered it. Now you could extrapolate things such that if you were talking about the delivery system for a bullet it might include not only the rifle, what fires it; but also the soldier who pulls the trigger. And if that is the case then you have to ask: "Well, how did the solder get there?" So, you could include the landing craft, or airplane to which the soldier rode to the battle, or the troop ship that brought him from the US or England or wherever. I guess it could get pretty silly if you think too much about it, or you could ask what a gallon of milk, in Iowa, cost on December 6th 1941.

Trying to deduce the economy of war is a silly endeavor, I mean what is the "Break even point" when you are sending men to kill other men who are killing people?

When you break things down to their most common denominator what do you get?
Was it Hitler annexing the Sudeten that motivated the mobilization of the free world? Was it the ink that FDR signed the war powers act with? was it the air that Churchill breathed when he said: "In the Course of Human events, never have so many given so much that so few...."?

The price for Man's inhumanity to man is so arbitrary that it is senseless, to even try, assigning a price to it.

 

Propaganda is another thing which can make huge changes and still the cost is quite low compared to weapons. Göbbels was very good at this especially in 1939-40, preparing the nation for action.

And training of the men. For example the May 1940 German vicotry in the west has been said by some authors that while the Allied waited for the attack, the Germans kept on trainign and kept the troops in shape, which was one of the decisive elements in the battle. Perhaps. Not a weapon but simply keeping the troops in good shape and alert.

 

Then there's the question of what is to be considered in determining the "cost effectiveness" are you just talking about whatever is physically impacting your opponent or do you include the delivery system? How about the training of the men using it? The delivery system of the delivery system? The support structure? Lots of good unanswered questions here. Asking them may teach us more than the answers.

 

Well, let's resolve this by putting together a life cycle analysis for each suggested system, and compare it to the alternatives....

A proper life cycle analysis includes all the hidden costs of a product, including it's dismantling / destruction at the end of it's life.Preferably, we include environmental impacts as well. Anyone who has had a large mine close down next door can bear witness to the effects on land prices, unless an effort is made to clear up the pollution.

 

I've spent several deades avoiding that sort of work. Just defining the limits of what you want to look at is a non trivial exercise.

 

This thread.
Classic example of how the tiniest odd little question can lead to genuinely interesting stuff.
Been really scratching my head about the multiple factors it's now throwing up. Fascinating.

Sadly, my only conclusions so far are that war is really really expensive (not exactly a cutting edge point), and that, once again; everything that seems statistically simple is hugely complex in the real world.
One .303 round seems so cheap, until you consider raw material extraction, machining, casting, pressing, tooling, tooling manufacture, transport, energy, training, design, safety, etc. etc. all that without the device to fire the round and putting a few million men in the field to deliver it.

I'm not entirely sure you can boil it down to anything other than a relatively crude, or even amusing, theoretical price vs. kill comparison.
Very interesting to try though, and importantly leads to so many other wider thoughts.

 

Let's apply the "KISS" principle here. Let's just go with the weapon and assume an unlimited supply of free ammo. Otherwise, we're going to go nuts doing this.

Kai, you're post on propaganda is very interesting. My feeling is that a post on the effectiveness of propaganda needs its own thread. Would you be willing to start it?

 

I´ll check if I can find the book on this. I mean the part of war Sept 1939 to May 1940 was a very active period for Göbbels to keep the nation and soldiers ready and hungry, although the people were afraid it would be the same as WW1 trench warfare for years.

 

But in some cases mentioned the weapon is the ammo (mines, torpedoes, the V-2, etc.). In other cases the cost and possibly logistics burden of the ammo could be a huge factor (artillery for instance).

 

One bottle consists only half a litre of liquid, which is not all petrol. The amount of fuel needed is not an issue.

 

I haven't read the entire thread yet, but I can't think of a more cost effective weapon system that a rifle fitted with a good sharp bayonet. If you're talking more bang for the buck, then there you have it.

 

you use already made products<> empty wine bottles/ rags/etc...fire ''more'' efficient than explosives<>burn the whole building down, instead of punching holes in it...[ horror effect ]