Cost breakdown of a submarine?

[Deathblow]

So I'm trying to understand the cost breakdown of a top of the line nuclear sub. How much of the $3 billion pricetage of a SW is from research and development, how much is from raw materials, and hull shaping, how much is from the reactor/powerplant cost, and how much is from auxillary systems, etc. My gut tells me that the cost breakdown can probably be broken down into 5 or 6 categories...

+technology development and testing cost
+hull materials, manufacturing, and shaping
+reactor plant and uranium cost
+electronic systems cost
+auxillary equipment cost
= total cost per sub.

but how much each category contributes, I have no clue..... anyone got any good info? :hmm: I'm guessing that the reactor and the hull shaping process is the most expensive parts of building a sub.

[Kapitan]

they wiegh and cost everything screws nuts bolts pipe joints ect ect

[Deathblow]

So I guess no one really knows the cost breakdown of the billion dollar pricetags. :-?

Found an interesting link that addresses just the material cost, not the totatl cost of the sub. Apparrently the steel itself is only about 1% of material cost, with large quantities cheap and easy to purchase. 10% of material cost are the pretreatment of the materials, 8% computer cost, 6% of material cost are the nuts and bolts of the sub....

... and a whopping 70% of material cost are in the form of "specialty materials".. with a small number of high dollar materials making up most of the material cost. Interesting.. :hmm:

Here's the link if anyones interested.
http://www.sceaonline.net/files/2004confpaper_meth1_The%20X%20Factor%20-%20Harris%20Lanes.ppt

[XabbaRus]

You forgot labour costs.

[Deathblow]

I was factoring that into each subsection cost. Like hull shaping cost including the cost of the workforce that does the shaping, and computer cost including the cost of the engineerings that install the systems.

[SmokinTep]

Any new class of sub has a high upfront design cost. Once the 1st one rolls off the docks, cost sort of stabilizes. You would think that a class of sub has all the same systems/equipment, but they don't. Especially in the Combat side of the house.

Major cost is in the combat side, (weapons/sonar, etc).