Russians hit the jackpot, check it out
(twitter.com)
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No, but in bulk a scrapper can make a very nice living off such stuff, as my family has. :) As we shake our heads at all the wasted gold.
PS Just checked with my gold evaluator. He says, $20-50 in each head unit and hundreds in the missile body. Your tax dollars at work.
I heard some cruise missiles have many pounds of silver in them.
That would be possible if they had silver wire. Nice stuff.
Maybe they have silver batteries
Maybe. The first ones to come out no doubt had more precious metals in them as they were rather experimental. There could definitely be "pounds" of wire in them.
How about the optic? Usually pure silicon or gallium arsenide. Gold is used as an electrical contact material because of its conductivity and resistance to corrosion. For $20, the cost is worth it, when the alternative is to make junk. (We don't flinch at using platinum in our catalytic converters.)
Finally had a chance to ask that. The lens is covering the heat seeking sensor, which depends on infrared light. Regular glass would not be transparent enough to infrared. Pure silicon would be more transparent, but would block other wavelengths. So if they are dark like these, they are either gallium arsenide or zinc selenide. Both are valuable and can be recycled either as lenses or raw material, but of course after it hits the target, there isn't much.
Actually, most such missiles fuze (detonate) at some distance from the target (forward and laterally), in order that the cloud of warhead fragments would have a high damage probability. The miss distance is almost never zero, so the best option is to accept the miss distance, minimize it, and design the warhead pattern accordingly. There are also differences in warhead design strategy.