The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) has announced approval of a possible arms sale to India. In particular, two contracts will be concluded for M982A1 Excalibur guided active-reactive 155mm shells and FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile systems.
Both contracts specify the quantity and total contract value, from which the approximate cost of each weapon sample can be determined. Thus, under the first contract, 216 units of M982A1 Excalibur, portable fire control systems (for programming the shell) and other related equipment and services will be sold.
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The contract value is estimated at $47.1 million. From this it can be calculated that the approximate cost of one shell is about $218,000. And this is really a lot, because the last known price, from a contract in summer 2023 with Spain, was $177,860.
That is, over two years the M982A1 Excalibur has become more expensive by over $40,000, which is 22.5%. At the same time, the contract included the same package of equipment and services.
Several factors could have influenced such price increase: dollar inflation, somewhat different amount of related services and equipment, and the fact that the contract for India has a slightly smaller quantity of weapons contracted, and volumes can often greatly affect cost.
Next, let's look at the second contract. Under it, 100 FGM-148 Javelin missiles, one FGM-148 Javelin fly-to-buy missile for batch verification, 25 LwCLU or CLU launchers, related equipment and services will be sold. The contract value is estimated at $45.7 million.
Thus, by rough calculations, the cost of one missile will be about $452,500. Of course, such an amount will not be correct, as these 25 launchers, which cost very much, take a very significant share. For understanding, under a contract for Britain in spring 2023, the price for missiles themselves without launchers was about $208,500 per unit.
But it's worth noting that Britain is one of the closest U.S. allies, so prices for them will be lower. It's also necessary to consider that the contract provided for delivery of as many as 600 missiles, so due to volumes the price was also even lower. Therefore, it's currently impossible to objectively assess the current cost under the contract for India.
Interestingly, this is India's first order of FGM-148 Javelin. The U.S. offered them these ATGMs back in 2010, but India sought not just to purchase a batch, but also to deploy local licensed production through technology transfer, which the U.S. wasn't very interested in.
Ultimately, India refused to purchase Javelin and bought Israeli Spike ATGMs. However, now theyve returned to the Americans again and are going to purchase a batch of FGM-148 Javelin. Why they made this decision is currently unknown.
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