The account of the war and its connection with expensive complex technologies: in the summer of 1944 the skies above southern England became the front line of a technological war. German V-1 ("V-1") cruise missiles, which fly at a constant altitude of about 750 meters at speeds of up to 650 km/h, have become a difficult target for air defense. It was impossible to intercept an automatic UAV using only fighter planes. London's salvation was the large-scale operation Operation Submarine, in which the combination of two outstanding anti-aircraft systems played a key role.
The guns were integrated into one complex with the latest American SCR-584 radars and Bell Labs electromechanical computers. But the main secret of success was fuses in the radio. Now a 94 mm projectile did not require a direct hit to the rocket body: the built-in mini-radar detonated a 12 kg missile in the immediate vicinity of the V-1, destroying it with fragments and a blast wave. Thanks to this, the effectiveness of the guns increased like an avalanche: the consumption of shells dropped from 2500 to a record low of 100-150 bullets per shot down. As it is easy to understand, the very high cost of the radio fuse, even x10 in relation to the cost of the bullet itself, more than paid for itself in a comprehensive evaluation of its effectiveness. Therefore, the other side of the coin in the account of war, in addition to the mass scale and availability of a certain means, it is necessary to take into account the impact that complex and expensive components of a product or complex can have. Hence there is some non-linear dependence - if an increase in accuracy, for example, 4 times costs 10 times more than 2 times, then this can cause an increase in the size of the warhead to maintain the same probability of destruction, 6-8 times. Which leads to a similar increase in the mass and cost of the carrier. And if the means to ensure accuracy would be only 20-30% of the total cost of the expensive version of the complex, then the less accurate version would actually be 4 times more expensive, based on the actual cost of hitting the target.