China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000

https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/on-sale-now-china-is-mass-producing

On sale now: China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000

The Radical Asymmetry of Modern Warfare (P2)

Inside China / Business
Real or not, this is probably the future. Lockheed execs want combat to be a distant exchange of multi-million dollar missiles. As shown in Ukraine, people actually fighting for their lives will wreck a $300million weapon with a slingshot.
Yeah, there's the Flamingo, Ukraine's cruise missile that uses old turbofan engines near the end of the service lives. But Ukrainians mentioned, that they're looking to mass produce low-cost engines using steel for their blades instead of exotic alloys, as used on most aircraft engines. Of course even advanced steel alloys cant survive the close to 1000C temps for long, but a cruise missile needs to fly for like 3-4 hours, not thousands. Probably a lot else can be simplified in the design, as turbofans are conceptually very simple, much simpler than ICE.
A turbo fan may be simpler but the tolerances are much tighter.