I would back into it from the basis that the Tomahawk missile as it exists in 2022 is a joke.
Note that there are roughly 1000 Tomahawks in the arsenal, they cost well above $1 million a piece and the time to replace them would be a few years. The unitary warhead on them now packs insufficient punch to justify the cost of the missile. Against that 40km long column north of Kyiv these would destroy about one vehicle a piece, which would hurt the Russians but by no means stop the attack, even if we used all the missiles we have.
The old nuclear variant had a a high yield (150 kT) and a low yield (basically a neutron bomb) setting. The low yield would have a roughly 1 km kill radius even against troops in tanks, so 20 or so missiles could stop that column.
In between there was a cluster bomb warhead that was several times more effective than the unitary warhead. Cluster bombs have the problem that a few percent of the bomblets fail to detonate leaving behind a dangerous condition that could go on for decades. Their removal from arsenals leaves behind a big gap.
I'm not sure how you can be certain of that. It is true that the last 3 annual procurements for Tomahawks were 90, 122, 60 [1, page 23], but that's because the US is a nation at peace. Most procurement programs have to deal with the issue that at peace you don't need that many weapons, but at war you do. So the Department of Defense pays both for the actual weapons it buys, but also to insure the ongoing production capacity, just in case. You can see this is the case as the 3 annual costs for these missiles were essentially the same and not actually proportional to the number of missiles.
If you think about it, it can't be any other way. The alternative to buy every single year of peace as if it were a year of war would be extraordinarily costly, and the defense budget is not really cheap as is.
So, while currently we procure about 100 Tomahawks per year, the production could easily be ramped up to 1000 per year, and probably more.
For example, in the 2010 budget, the statement about Tomahawks was: "Continues production at a minimum sustaining rate." [2, page 45]. At the time, that sustaining rate was judged to be 191. Just 2 years before it was 496.
NATO doesn't seem to fight that way, and hence Tomahawks are not intended this way.
The NATO playbook for "how do you fight a war" appears roughly as follows:
- Destroy enemy air force and air defences, using specialised aircraft, special forces and conventional weapons, such as Tomahawks (you don't need a 1 km range to take out an airfield or a major air defence complex)
- Then destroy as much enemy force from the air, where you are uncontested
- Then, go in with the land forces, heavily supported from the air for both attacks and reconaissance.
A dozen F-16s or A-10s can make mincemeat out of such an armoured column and are better suited for this than many Tomahawks or small nukes, while doing much less damage elsewhere. If NATO were fighting this, they probably don't want to destroy everything on that road; they'll need the road, its bridges, and un-pissed-off people living around it.
>. Against that 40km long column north of Kyiv these would destroy about one vehicle a piece, which would hurt the Russians but by no means stop the attack, even if we used all the missiles we have.
This scenario would trigger a full-scale nuclear war. These conventional missiles are there only to hit infrastructure and enemy generals in proxy wars and local conflicts.
Note that there are roughly 1000 Tomahawks in the arsenal, they cost well above $1 million a piece and the time to replace them would be a few years. The unitary warhead on them now packs insufficient punch to justify the cost of the missile. Against that 40km long column north of Kyiv these would destroy about one vehicle a piece, which would hurt the Russians but by no means stop the attack, even if we used all the missiles we have.
The old nuclear variant had a a high yield (150 kT) and a low yield (basically a neutron bomb) setting. The low yield would have a roughly 1 km kill radius even against troops in tanks, so 20 or so missiles could stop that column.
In between there was a cluster bomb warhead that was several times more effective than the unitary warhead. Cluster bombs have the problem that a few percent of the bomblets fail to detonate leaving behind a dangerous condition that could go on for decades. Their removal from arsenals leaves behind a big gap.