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Thus

are required. Therefore, operating inventory of 4 × 102 riflescan be assumedat any time.

A gun barrel will have to be replaced approximately every 1500 shots; thus over the 40 years,

will be needed. A gun barrel probably would cost (in continuous production

several hundred thousand dollars—say a million dollars. The total cost of rifle barrels is thus3 × 105 barrels × 106 $/barrel = $3 ×1011 for barrels.

If the rifles are organized into 10-barrel stations, on land or at sea, and a billion dollars is allocated for the capital cost of each station, one might expect to buy 40 10-barrel stations to keep 350 barrels operating at a time, thus giving a cost for stations of 40 stations × 109 $/station = $4 × 1010.

This should probably be doubled, at least; to allow for overhead, power, maintenance, replacement, and so on. Multiplying by 5 gives $2 × 1011 for stations.

Finally, people are needed to operate the system. Although the system would probably be highly automated, assume that it will work like current operations. Then allocate 10 people/barrel × 4 × 102 barrels × 3 shifts × $105/person/yr × 40 years = $48 × 109 $5 × 1010, which can be doubled to include indirect personnel, overhead, and so on, giving $1011 for operators. Therefore, 24,000 people are assumed to be involved at any time.

To sum up,

giving an annual undiscounted cost of $50/40 × 1011 = $100billion.