You can’t put a cost on safety – or so the saying goes.
But actually the cost of weapons and warheads can run into many, many billions and often becomes central to a huge debate when a country’s budget is stretched.
The issue of costly missiles is back in the headlines as the conflict in the Red Sea rages on.
HMS Diamond deployed its £1m a piece Sea Viper missiles to shoot down Iranian-backed Houthi drones.
UK and US naval forces managed to repel Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Red Sea according to Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.
Military analyst Michael Clarke says that he would expect nothing less from as the Sea Viper missiles costing £1m each.
He said that when a Sea Viper is fired “it seems to explode out of the deck” adding “and it doesn’t miss.”
But what is the world’s most costly missile?
It seems that perhaps dubious accolade belongs to the Trident missile – at which estimates in the past have put at $70m (around £55m) each. This figure comes from a US 2012 ‘cost of war’ analysis.
So what is Trident?
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament explains more. It said: “Trident is Britain’s nuclear weapons system.
“It is made up of four nuclear submarines.
“Each sub carries up to eight missiles on board, and each missile carries up to five nuclear bombs – or warheads – on top.”
Just how powerful are the missiles?
The website also explains more on the capabilities of the weapons.
It added: “Each of these bombs is around eight times as destructive as the bomb which flattened Hiroshima in 1945, killing over 140,000 civilians.
“One Trident submarine patrols the seas at all times.”
And according to reports Britain has now increased the number of warheads each Trident nuclear missile carries as part of a precautionary measure in the face of growing threats from Russia.
What next for Trident and its missiles?
In a vote in July 2016 the House of Commons approved the decision to maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent beyond the early 2030s.
After almost a decade of work on the project, that vote enabled the programme to move forward into its “manufacturing phase”.
This will see the construction of four new Dreadnought class ballistic missile submarines entering service in the 2030s.
