Cruise missiles are a lot more expensive then bombs dropped from jets, as long as the jets survive.
A Tomahawk missile costs about $2M. A Mk 84 bomb is $16k for the "dumb" variant, and up to $35k in the JDAM version. It also has twice the payload.
An F-16 can carry 4 such bombs on one mission. Even when including the operating cost of the F-16, you can fly at least 5 missions, and drop 20 Mk 84 JDAMs for 40x payload using F-16s at the same cost as one Tomahawk.
A tomahawk costs $2M, but it takes 8 years and north of $1M to train a pilot.
I know I'm not getting the missile back, but the survivability of manned aircraft against a near-peer or peer-competitor may not that great...
Now that pilot may be reusable, but they also come with other challenges, like requiring 1/3 of an aircraft simply for pilot life support. They also get tired, sleepy, lazy, and cannot handle high Gs.
Then there is the logistic overhead of maintaining a re-used aircraft. Again, this has benefits, but for every hour of flight there are like 17 man-hours of maintenance. Plus you need mechanics, a fuel / parts / ammo / tools supply chains, runways, etc.
When you take total cost of securing a safe ingress to drop cheap bombs I suspect the cruise missile is still often cheaper. But I think you’re right that there is some transition of cost dynamics depending on what is being planned and if there is some value in holding that area.
Yes, you are right. Over some targets, the missile is cheaper. But over a target where you can fly freely, air dropped bombs are massively cheaper than cruise missiles. In fact, bombs dropped from bombers are more comparable to artillery than to cruise missiles. Also, each bomb can be much more powerful and be dropped with much better accuracy than most artillery.
Against targets that are well protected by enemy SAM's and fighters, the equation changes, as you correctly state. Flying F-16s direcly on top of S-400 batteries doesn't make much sense.
But then again, the S-400s themselves are not free, and if you can destroy the air defences at a cost that is lower than the purchase cost of those air defences, an air campaign is still worth it, even if it may need to be delayed until the air defences are taken care of.
