The Manhattan Project was the US Military’s atomic bomb development project. At the time, it would cost 2 billion and took only 3 years to develop. To put things in perspective, if it were being done today, it would cost the USA 20 billion.
Does anyone know of any other projects in history the US military has undertaken that costs more than this?
I think the American hydrogen-bomb project had more high price.
Or Apollo project. 25 billions dollars, certainly it wasn’t purely martial project. But 90% of technological researchs of Apollo program had the war application in future.
Ecpesially in space industry US had a much high-prices projects. 2 billions dollars is not so much today. Compare it with Space Shattle program or the Space Strategic defense program (“Star wars”).
I don’t want to be political, but “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in the long run will cost much, much more than 20 billion US dollars.
Lancer44
Marshall plan with its almost 13 billion US dollars was cheaper, isn’t it? 
Vietnam costed around 140 billion.
I’d say to drop the political aspect.
Edited: I think we must talk in today values (in current dollar).
I agree with Dani, to get a real comparison, we have to get recalculated figures for 2006 US dollars values…
Who knows how to do it…
Formula?? Formulas??? Multiple Formula’s???
I believe Dani is the right person and already knows how to do it.
It was Dani’s idea anyway!
He will enjoy it too!
Cheers,
Lancer44
No. I’m not the right person.
…and no. It wasn’t my idea.
This seemed like it could be somewhat helpful…you might find a better one out there.
It’s tough to compare single projects with large scale ground conflicts. Although, despite what we’ve been told, Iraq will surpass the Marshall Plan in cost, with almost none of the benefits I fear.
I can’t think of any single weapon system, but considering the U.S. currently spends about $400 Billion on defense, $20B in today’s dollars almost seems like a drop in the bucket.
Nickdfresh said - “I can’t think of any single weapon system, but considering the U.S. currently spends about $400 Billion on defense, $20B in today’s dollars almost seems like a drop in the bucket.”
Personally I couldn’t think of any modern defense programme that would cost as LITTLE as $20Bn.
Aircraft carriers, missile systems, aircraft and so on - all cost billions to develop and build.
Take the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) - cost to US alone (excluding allies who are buying some as well) - about $80Bn. See http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/f-35.htm
I’d say the A bombs were extremely good value for money in that the probably saved many times their cost in planes/ships/tanks/ammo etc that otherwise would have been expended had the A bombs not brought the war to an end. That of course excludes the cost in lives.
Just on economical grounds alone the A bomb probably made a good business case.
Especially for the Russians, who basically stole it for pennies on the dollar!
Measuring it as a fraction of GDP is probably the best way of showing how big a sacrifice the country was prepared to make for the result.
As for the Russians stealing the atomic weapon designs, they got bits but not all of it. Kurchatov for instance was a very smart guy, and the Soviets were the first to get a working thermonuclear device. OK, so it was a Sloika type device rather than a true fusion weapon (i.e. boosted fission - the Teller-Ulam design was the first true fusion weapon) but it was still some distance ahead of the US.
G’day,
Can someone clear something up for me. Some time ago there was a tv special Victory In The Pacific and I unfortunately only caught bits and pieces of it. So I could be quite wrong here, but when talking of the B-29 bombing raids it was said the B-29 project from start to finish was the single biggest expenditure project of the US military during the war.
I know this was a huge undertaking, using technologies never tried before in aeronautics, but bigger than the Manhatten project?
Regards to all
Digger.
Gee, hasn’t the War in Iraq already cost nearly half a TRILLION dollars? Let me now list all the benefits of this vast undertaking:
1
2
3
4
5
…
Some “projects” and military undertakings are worth more than others…
Royal, it seems every war had some huge technical achievement, but I fail to think of one for Iraq. If only they can figure out how to better detect IEDs. That would be a nice technological achievement. I know they were working on the sniper/fire detector, but too buggy right now.
A question, gentlemen. Isn’t comparing a single weapon development project with an entire war comparing apples and oranges?
JT
It might even be more benefical, ww2admin, to invent a truth detector that works to ferret out the lies of politicians who “just want to go to war” for their own reasons but feel a need to BS the American public that there is a “clear and present danger” when in fact there was none.
There are a number of calculators online that translate dollars in one year to dollars in another. We do this in looking at building costs all the time because some of our projects are 50 years old now. For this we use cost inflation books published by the Means Company.
The Manhattan project did cost a lot, but I wonder how it compares, say, to the Tennessee Valley Authority project which covered hundreds, may thousands of square miles and was completed just before we entered WWII? I don’t have time to do a search now but it might be interesting to know.
I’m not sure that that is correct.
I can’t think of any technical advance during a war that wasn’t just an acceleration of something that had been developed, or was starting to be developed, before the war.
Often with far-sighted anticipation of a war.
… but I fail to think of one for Iraq. If only they can figure out how to better detect IEDs. That would be a nice technological achievement. I know they were working on the sniper/fire detector, but too buggy right now.
I think this reflects a deficiency in tactical thinking and, worse, failing to address the real strategy required to win that conflict.
America long ago won the war in Iraq.
The problem is that America can‘t occupy successfully, nor can it enable its preferred government in Iraq to govern.
IED’s are no more the problem in Iraq than the SVN / American / Australian mines lifted by the VC in Vietnam were.
The military, but not central, problem is deficiencies in counter-insurgency tactics, notably by America in Vietnam and now in Iraq where the focus is on military actions by conventional forces against irregulars.
Very occasionally it is possible to infiltrate irregular forces to some effect, as Britain did in Northern Ireland courtesy of having largely the same language and culture, but it can almost never happen in places like Vietnam or Iraq.
But the central problem in all cases is the absence of a political solution acceptable to all parties, or a military force capable of crushing all opposition as North Vietnam did in Vietnam. Neither applies on either side in Iraq. So it will just go on until one side or the other gets into a position to impose a political or military solution.
I’m not holding my breath for either.
There are so many errors made in Iraq that it beggars the imagination as to where to start. One of the biggest failures is that of the imagination, to think that the enemy will meet you with his own conventional forces in uniform and clearly identifiable when that particular army was already beaten. The insurgency knows full well that fighting set piece battles may be what we want, but for them it is a recipe for disaster. This is why I have a real problem with the viewpoint that the US “won” the war but is losing the war’s aftermath. I don’t think so.
The insurgency taking place right now, apart from its civil war aspects, is simply war other means, not a different war, but a continuation more likely to get results. The US proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that that it’s regular forces simply could not win a war against an unidentifiable insurgency in Vietnam coupled with an essentially worthless and corrupt “civilian” government to which the people owed no allegiance. If the North Vietnamese army had marched out in columns of tanks and soldiers it would have been slaughtered. They weren’t stupid and fought as insurgents. When everyone and no one could be your enemy, you are in serious guacamole.
To claim now that we won the war is patently untrue because if we did, Iraq would be pacified by now. To claim that we beat the ‘regular army’ of Iraq is true, but essentially meaningless because we are losing the aftermath which is war by other means.
I was told by one of the first secretaries in the US embassy in Vietnam that the US “had won the war against the Viet Cong”. OK, how do you spell BS? Whose helicopters on the US embassy roof were they?
Parsing of words is ultimately unsatisfactory because the truth will out. This war is lost. It won’t make any difference if we pull out now or 6 months from now. It is un-winnable. But it will make a huge difference to the soldiers who will die for nothing if we stay. Sad, but true. I realize many Americans can’t stomach the truth of this, but it must be faced.
I could be wrong, but I get a very faint impression that, despite being in Texas, you don’t get a lot of invitations to Dubya’s ranch to chaw over foreign policy. 