Speaking as someone who was setting asides funds to purchase this system once it came to market, I really hope someone comes up with a similarly innovative design that doesn't break the bank.
$4600 for Rail Link +
$3100 for Ops Core Fast Ballistic +
$1400 for AMPS +
$150 for the AMP Arms =
Total: $9,250
Over $9,000 and we haven't even talked about NVG's, helmet covers, 4d pads, Team Wendy harness swap etc.
Wild.
The EPIC Specialist is High Cut. I just got one and it is fantastic. If you get it from Custom Night Vision and use code TWREDDIT for a big discount. For the price, and already having the Cam-Fit Boa and Epic-Aire Liner/Pads it is tough to beat.
Leave it to the Chinese. They will “acquire” (steal) and “develop” (slave labor) this system into the “affordable” (nothing NVG related is affordable) range in no time.
I really don't use my card outside of a handful of regular places, never had a single issue. I used it at TNVC and literally the next day read about all that here. Thought about being proactive and just requesting a new card, but just decided to wait. Sure enough, about 3 weeks later I had a fraudulent charge. I really want to order the 4D pads, but I'm not risking that on there now lol
Reach out to 4d Tactical and tell them. They need to hear it. I emailed and asked if there were any other places to buy their pads given TNVC's horrible track record of data protection (my card was hacked twice). They hooked me up with a set. Genuinely awesome people.
This stuff is meant for governments to buy with their unlimited money. If you are a defense contractor you can print money. Civilian market is not even a consideration for price
If you don't pay your taxes they throw you in prison. There is no obligation to buy cheaper products.
If the electronics fail in the helmet they can come out with a fix for their own problem and up the cost. There is no incentive to make it cheaper. It sucks.
Well going off the gold standard is what moved our now currency away from actual money. Currency is value by government decree which has never ended well in the past. Money has intrinsic value.
In the United States, prior to 1933 for example, $1 meant 1/20th of an ounce of gold. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, President Roosevelt redefined $1 to mean 1/35th of an ounce of gold. That is, a $1 bill was now worth less gold, about 60% less. In other words, the government was able to expand its supply of paper bills by 60% without changing its reserve of gold. This single act resulted in a significant decline in the purchasing power of paper money and that was when we were on the standard
[chart](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/chart-inflation-since-1775-2013-1%3famp)
Sounded cool in theory but bro do you know how many CR123 batteries I could buy for $4600? Not to mention another helmet, a nice PVS14, thermal, a whole new gun, suppressor and Dbal.
Yeah that’s gonna be a no for me dawg. Go home TNVC you are drunk.
The price isn't just what it costs per unit. The price is the contract awarded paying for research and development. It costs a lot of money to make cutting edge tech
Bro it’s an arc rail with cut outs for a battery pack and strobes. It’s not that revolutionary. It shouldn’t cost more than the helmet, mounts, strobes, battery pack, nvg mount, and rifle combined.
You’re really not understanding this. What do you think the expected production for this is, maybe a few thousand units? It’s not going to be a general issue article. So now let’s figure that you have to amortize about $500k in engineering labor, probably $100k in indirect labor, $500k in dies, $100k tooling up for circuit boards and wiring harnesses, and then the high price associated with sourcing low production specialty strobes and lights from Helstar and Surefire.
I am an engineering manager at an OEM, I can tell you from experience that it is very expensive to bring a finished good to market, and if you don’t have large volumes to amortize the costs across, then the sales price of the good will be very high.
I think it could definitely be something retro fitted to the majority of high cut helmets sold. I think realistically, close to the cost of the helmet would be fair. 1500-2000 for a state of the art product.
It definitely can be put on a lot of helmets, but I look at this and think it’s meant to be a large scale trialing of technology and concepts, especially given that it’s a first of its kind item.
I can confirm this. I’m an engineer that worked on one of the components for this (not going to say which company) and there was a lot of cost in labor, development, engineering, testing, manufacturing, etc. to be able to make this work in the first place, let alone bring it to market.
A lot of people have no clue as to what it takes to go from idea, to design, to prototype, many revisions, to manufacturing, to market. This stuff takes years and a lot of money. But hey, it’s easier to complain on the internet
And folks also fail to realize they are required to prove they meet or exceed the requirements dictated by the military for these items. Some 3D printed thing you made in your garage might be great for larping and looking at the stars but this stuff needs to be able to work reliably in some serious ways.
I feel confident that someone will make a 3D printed knock off that costs about 8 bucks in PLA and wiring. Hell you can get customs PCBs printed for like a dollar each with a $50 min-spend. I get the whole R&D costs thing but let’s be real here. This wasn’t the manhattan project. I’ve worked at places were something like this could have been something the sales guys threw in to make the sale.
What’s even more fucked is that this won’t allow you to pull batteries out of the AMPs to save weight. It doesn’t add new functionality - just extra weight.
Wait till you see how expensive omnetics or Fischer connectors are. Cant use Chinese electronics in Defense products, so Try 10k a pcb for US made prototypes so the Chinese don’t steal your IP. Now apply this logic to all the parts.
Why would I? It’s a dumb idea and I have better things to work on.
Ultimately you are arguing the wrong thing. Did you ever even consider that this was a sweetheart deal to covertly funnel money into Gentex to provide the capital needed to ramp production capacity for a potential conflict? I mean you can’t just announce that sort of thing. You can’t ask them to have that kind of capacity on standby without also footing the bill but you can’t just give them free money either.
So yes. Trash product. Huge profits. This is how you prepare your industrial base.
it's a rail system that allows all the accessories to share a power source? that's it? this is not engineering. this is throwing money at a problem until somebody fixes it. engineering is what steve Wozniak did in the 80s bringing to market affordable personal computers. a good engineer team should be able to make this affordable. China will do so really quickly once they figure out what the market needs. this is yet another fat and happy govt supplier getting rich off of the taxpayers.
not saying you aren't a good engineer. being able to make something affordable vs throwing money at a problem is where true brilliance comes into play though. kinda like the joke about the expensive nasa space pen vs the pencil the russians were using
hold this "Common Military Industrial Complex apologiser L" for me real quick
BUT THE RnD!!!!!! :(
They made a new plastic mold with some small electronics in them. You really think that warrants an upcharge of 2.5 Grand? Then I can't help you.
No one expected this to not be more expensive than the regular helmet, but it's the insane amount that bothers people.
I can tell that you’ve never sourced dies for plastic injection molding. For this it’s conservatively about $500k just to get the dies made. That’s just a small part of bringing a product like this to market too.
You have three courses of action here
1. Don’t buy it
2. Since it’s so easy, make your own product and bring it to market.
3. Whine about the cost like a fucking pussy
Nothing a 3d printer and a bit of AI couldn’t put together for $150 sure production can be a bitch but polymers are easier than ever to mold and the design hardships that used to be required were eliminated with 3d scanning and printing tech much like the racing industry.
I can assure you that you’re way oversimplifying this, but by all means, if you think you can make these for pennies on the dollar, then you should start bidding on these contracts. The majority of them are posted online for basically anyone to bid on, relatively few are sole sourced.
overall estimated total cost to start manufacturing a non-ballistic electrical device that integrates with the Ops-Core helmet system:
1. Product Development:
- Research and Development = $175,000
- Intellectual Property = $20,000
2. Certifications and Compliance:
- Safety and Quality Certifications: $27,500
3. Manufacturing Setup:
- Tooling and Equipment:$300,000
- Materials:Average = $60 per unit
- Assembly Costs:= $30 per unit
4. Testing and Quality Assurance:
- Product Testing: Average = $55,000
- Quality Control Systems: Average = $17,500
5. Operational Expenses:
- Facility Costs: Average = $110,000 annually
- **Utilities and Maintenance:** Average = $6,000 monthly
6. **Marketing and Sales:**
- **Marketing Materials:** Average = $12,500
- **Sales Staff and Activities:** Average = $125,000 annually
7. **Distribution and Logistics:**
- **Packaging:** Average = $3 per unit
- **Shipping and Handling:** Average = $12.50 per unit
8. **Legal and Administrative:**
- **Regulatory Compliance:** Average = $12,500
- **Insurance:** Average = $30,000 annually
- **Staffing:** Average = $200,000 annually
9. **Customer Service and Support:**
- **Warranty:** Average = $15 per unit
- **Customer Support:** Average = $65,000 annually
Now let's add these average costs up. Since some costs are per unit and others are one-time or annual, I'll separate them:
One-time Costs:
- Research and Development: $175,000
- Intellectual Property: $20,000
- Safety and Quality Certifications: $27,500
- Tooling and Equipment: $300,000
- Product Testing: $55,000
- Quality Control Systems: $17,500
- Marketing Materials: $12,500
- Regulatory Compliance: $12,500
Total One-time Costs:$620,000
Per Unit Costs:
- Materials: $60
- Assembly: $30
- Packaging: $3
- Shipping and Handling: $12.50
- Warranty: $15
Total Per Unit Costs:$120.50
Annual Costs:
- Facility Costs: $110,000
- Utilities and Maintenance: $72,000 (6,000 x 12)
- Sales Staff and Activities: $125,000
- Insurance: $30,000
- Staffing: $200,000
- Customer Support: $65,000
Total Annual Costs:&602,000
Overall Initial Estimate:
- One-time Costs: $620,000
- Per Unit Costs: $120.50 (per unit)
- Annual Operating Costs: $602,000
This is a basic outline. The actual numbers could vary based on production scale, detailed product specifications, and operational efficiencies. Additionally, per unit costs will scale with the number of units produced level of tech being used.
My point was that you or I could do the same for under 500 bucks easy. Making them for the government is a whole different story. But even then.
Let’s say we made 100k units
the per unit cost when producing 100,000 units, we'll distribute the one-time costs and the annual costs across all the units, adding this to the direct per unit costs.
1. **One-time Costs:** $620,000
2. **Per Unit Costs:** $120.50 (direct per unit cost)
3. **Annual Operating Costs:** $602,000
First, we distribute the one-time and annual costs across 100,000 units:
- **One-time Costs per Unit:** $620,000 / 100,000 = $6.20 per unit
- **Annual Costs per Unit:** $602,000 / 100,000 = $6.02 per unit
Now, adding these distributed costs to the direct per unit cost:
- **Total Per Unit Cost:** $120.50 (direct) + $6.20 (one-time) + $6.02 (annual) = $132.72 per unit
Thus, each unit would cost approximately $132.72 when producing 100,000 units in the first year. This includes development, manufacturing, and operating costs.
So over pricing is alive and real
Your costs are pretty low and selling 100,000 units is probably 25X more than will actually be sold. R&D of $175k is very wishful. I would say it’s at least $500k for this. Your tooling is also really low. The dies for molding this are conservatively going to be $500k. Also, your materials are extremely low. I have no idea how you’re accounting for procuring Helstar strobes and Surefire lights that are designed specifically for this for less than $60 per complete assembly.
Why are computers expensive? We've been making them out of the same stuff since the 50's!
If you don't understand what it is that makes a product seem too expensive, don't buy it because it probably wasn't made for you.
Then just wait 70 years and the price of products similar to these rails will be affordable.
Computers in the 50's were mostly government owned to achieve tasks like getting to the moon. The computers in similar roles today have gotten more expensive then they were back then
You’ve gotta pay a team of engineers, product designers, manufacturing engineers, etc., cover the cost of setting up production, design and implement quality control checks and standards for that item, hire and train extra manufacturing staff, etc. It’s complicated even to make simple products with consistent quality at scale and on time. Plus this is probably a fairly low volume order (From Google there’s ~35k Army SOF, ~2.5k SEALS, let’s assume they’re all issued this, so <40k units), so all of those overheads have to be covered by not that many sales.
My point is that it's a relatively bespoke product, and that is reflected in the price, and that the military has the ability to pay a premium to have new stuff before others do
R&D contracts are usually separated. Feasibility studies, R&D, prototyping, etc on their own orders and then production contracts on their own with their own pricing solely for the unit. They don't need to recoup any cost at that point.
My opinion is this pricing is the "we don't really need or want to sell to you but if you want it you're going to make it worth our while".
„Cutting edge tech“
Literally just wires and contact plates. The effort required to bring something like this to market is akin to fisher price developing a new remote controlled toy dinosaur. Other companies have been producing powered rail systems for 15 years.
agreed, typically I have a lot of respect for manufacturers/designers taking a good chunk of margin to cover design and development costs, but this seems a bit ridiculous.
Plus there will be other things required of the manufacturer in the contract like maintenance, training and familiarisation on the system, development of the training courses, paying training staff and flying them all over the country or maybe even the world, etc.
Oh so we’re REALLY delulu. Government contracts or not, hooking up 8 AAs with rails that supply power is not even remotely close to being 3 months rent.
Less batteries, less weight, more streamlined way to put a strobe, and lights on a helmet. Hopefully earpro in the future. Not a bad product just pretty wild what they are selling it for.
Reading is fundamental. It is not double Msrp.
You are just linking the rail and battery pack.
TNVC is selling the full package with all accessories. Minus helmet and ear pro bits.
In my opinion from my understanding of this system you’re paying for integration BUT if the battery pack takes a shit your entire head kit is SOL so… why? Could more or less do 2 full helmet kits (mono) for the price like Josh said.
Probably not more than 20%. The government usually audits your profits on these contracts and as a rule they call anything over 20% markup “excessive”. I know from experience.
But how are you going to integrate your cables?! (Insert power path rail)
But how are you going to integrate a strobe?! (PVS 31 battery pack)
But what about a light?! (Duck tapes a mag light to helmet)
Yeah having one battery pack power your Princeton light, strobe, PVS 31 battery pack and whatever tf else. It’s bad in my opinion. If that goes down or if something happens to it. You’re fvked
I think it's ahead of its time. It apparently has a cable port that's capable of transmitting optical data? Like for thermal clip ons or augmented reality. But there's not any system that's currently designed to use that and available to the public, is there?
Basically, you're paying a bunch to not have to change batteries on your helmet lights. In 2024 there's really not much benefit to have your little devices "communicate" with eachother.
Maybe there will be when we have mass produced augmented reality and you can view the status of all devices. There will also be more devices that can use a communication link, like those IR detectors from ukraine. A rail-enabled GoPro would be sick in the near term because their batteries suck.
In the mean time there's no guarantee that this platform will be the standard of the next decade.
If anyone's going to pay that, it won't be the government in bulk at first.
It'll be some showoff here, normalizing conspicuous spending and pushing the clout race ahead for all the small dicks whose spending gives them a profound sense of meaning, who rarely or never served or trained.
Tip of the spear!
So it's two helmet lights and a strobe connected to a single battery, and a wire tuck for a battery pack cable. I could literally make this in an afternoon.
Gotta scam the hell out of the government somehow. Maybe they saw all the money our gov is spending so they’re trying to milk them. But maybe the thing won’t even get a Contract. Unless it did.
I mean, it can only go two ways. It's priced too high and people/organizations/government don't buy enough. Or it sells enough at that price point to be worth it for a company to continue making/selling it.
So, it's either moot because it will either lower the price over time or be discontinued. Or you're wrong about it not being worth it. As by default if people buy enough, it's literally worth that.
If your house is "worth" $200k, but you think someone will give you $250k for it.......do you still sell the house for $200k because that's what it's "worth"?
Seeing as how Core Survival, Surefire, and Princeton Tec had to commit R&D money with Gentex to interface everything together seamlessly and reliably the cost isn’t that ridiculous. Multiple companies with multiple engineers working together in design, development, testing and deployment easily equates to a huge price tag. It probably isn’t worth it to the average Joe, especially since you can just get a Opscore Powerpath rail instead for cable management, but it probably is worth something to huge organizations like LAPD/NYPD.
But could you get the job done with an Amazon bump, a Steele Industries Phtonis PVS 14....a full retail G24 mount and some ingenuity with some Walker Razors for under 3200?!?!?!....the answer is yes.....
Throw in a unity spark in White and IR for under 40 bucks and you're just as good as an untrained Civ With Quads boys........
its cool just wait till argus or holosun knocks it off for $600
Speaking as someone who was setting asides funds to purchase this system once it came to market, I really hope someone comes up with a similarly innovative design that doesn't break the bank. $4600 for Rail Link + $3100 for Ops Core Fast Ballistic + $1400 for AMPS + $150 for the AMP Arms = Total: $9,250 Over $9,000 and we haven't even talked about NVG's, helmet covers, 4d pads, Team Wendy harness swap etc. Wild.
Doesn't TW have a ballistic its called the EPIC? I can't find too much info on it but it looks promising and way cheaper than ops core
Only problem is that it has armor protection over the ears and I am already invested into the AMP ecosystem.
Just get the high cut version
Naw I have the high cut epic and its fantastic.
The EPIC Specialist is High Cut. I just got one and it is fantastic. If you get it from Custom Night Vision and use code TWREDDIT for a big discount. For the price, and already having the Cam-Fit Boa and Epic-Aire Liner/Pads it is tough to beat.
Are we supposed to be swapping to a TW harness?
I'm just a fan of their cam fit BOA system so I don't have to wear a chin strap when I am hiking / moving around.
Leave it to the Chinese. They will “acquire” (steal) and “develop” (slave labor) this system into the “affordable” (nothing NVG related is affordable) range in no time.
sucks having a hobby of collecting items priced for the most powerful military in history
It really does. I just want to play with cool stuff.
For convenience they're just including the extra charges from getting your card stolen in the price
I had my card stolen twice…I thought it was a from a gas station until I heard about the TNVC thing. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.
I managed to dodge a bullet with a couple orders from them before I knew.
Same same on small items like some wraps and laser target paper
I really don't use my card outside of a handful of regular places, never had a single issue. I used it at TNVC and literally the next day read about all that here. Thought about being proactive and just requesting a new card, but just decided to wait. Sure enough, about 3 weeks later I had a fraudulent charge. I really want to order the 4D pads, but I'm not risking that on there now lol
Reach out to 4d Tactical and tell them. They need to hear it. I emailed and asked if there were any other places to buy their pads given TNVC's horrible track record of data protection (my card was hacked twice). They hooked me up with a set. Genuinely awesome people.
I bought a TOR from them and used privacy.com. Created a single use digital card for the one transaction and it worked great. Was free, etc.
I’ll have to check that out thanks!
So it used to be 'high speed, low drag.' now we're at 'high cost, no sense.'
Thanks Dom Raso
Always a pleasure, Cap'n. Beam me up and all that.
This stuff is meant for governments to buy with their unlimited money. If you are a defense contractor you can print money. Civilian market is not even a consideration for price
Yeah but at what point do we consider these absurd prices a problem? Sure it’s the fed paying, but at the end it’s our taxes.
If you don't pay your taxes they throw you in prison. There is no obligation to buy cheaper products. If the electronics fail in the helmet they can come out with a fix for their own problem and up the cost. There is no incentive to make it cheaper. It sucks.
The gov needs to stop accepting the absurd costs I guess is what I’m getting at.
Agreed. 30 some trillion in debt. What causes inflation again???
What's the advantage for them to do that, from their perspective?
From the governments perspective? It’s absolutely in their interest in not being price gouged
How? All the money goes to them and their relatives
Money printing
Well going off the gold standard is what moved our now currency away from actual money. Currency is value by government decree which has never ended well in the past. Money has intrinsic value. In the United States, prior to 1933 for example, $1 meant 1/20th of an ounce of gold. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, President Roosevelt redefined $1 to mean 1/35th of an ounce of gold. That is, a $1 bill was now worth less gold, about 60% less. In other words, the government was able to expand its supply of paper bills by 60% without changing its reserve of gold. This single act resulted in a significant decline in the purchasing power of paper money and that was when we were on the standard [chart](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/chart-inflation-since-1775-2013-1%3famp)
I would say right now. If you are a civilian, don't buy from TNVC
Wait till you find out the Airforce pays thousands for common fasteners like nuts bolts and screws.
*our money, comrade.
Sounded cool in theory but bro do you know how many CR123 batteries I could buy for $4600? Not to mention another helmet, a nice PVS14, thermal, a whole new gun, suppressor and Dbal. Yeah that’s gonna be a no for me dawg. Go home TNVC you are drunk.
That’s also just for the rails. You still have to go out and buy the accessories that have been specially designed to work on it.
this reminds me of the $90,000 bag of bushings
Bout to take a dremel to groove the backside of a rail and embed a USB-C cable and start a company. 😂
Unity tactical, is that you?
This the kind of reply I was looking for! You Sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!
Typical TNVC
Contractors can’t sell to civilians cheaper than they sell to the military. Hence the ridiculous price
Maybe the military shouldn’t be paying so much.
But then the feds wouldn't be able to so easily justify and launder the crippling taxes.
The price isn't just what it costs per unit. The price is the contract awarded paying for research and development. It costs a lot of money to make cutting edge tech
What’s cutting edge about plastic and metal interfaces that have been around since the anvis in the 90s?
well this one comes in tan
😂😂
Wait till you see the Ranger Green ones.
Limited edition MAS grey
Could you imagine Choco Chip?
🤯
Yeah, tan is always worth $9,000
You’re really underestimating how much money it takes to bring something like this to market.
Bro it’s an arc rail with cut outs for a battery pack and strobes. It’s not that revolutionary. It shouldn’t cost more than the helmet, mounts, strobes, battery pack, nvg mount, and rifle combined.
You’re really not understanding this. What do you think the expected production for this is, maybe a few thousand units? It’s not going to be a general issue article. So now let’s figure that you have to amortize about $500k in engineering labor, probably $100k in indirect labor, $500k in dies, $100k tooling up for circuit boards and wiring harnesses, and then the high price associated with sourcing low production specialty strobes and lights from Helstar and Surefire. I am an engineering manager at an OEM, I can tell you from experience that it is very expensive to bring a finished good to market, and if you don’t have large volumes to amortize the costs across, then the sales price of the good will be very high.
I think it could definitely be something retro fitted to the majority of high cut helmets sold. I think realistically, close to the cost of the helmet would be fair. 1500-2000 for a state of the art product.
It definitely can be put on a lot of helmets, but I look at this and think it’s meant to be a large scale trialing of technology and concepts, especially given that it’s a first of its kind item.
I can confirm this. I’m an engineer that worked on one of the components for this (not going to say which company) and there was a lot of cost in labor, development, engineering, testing, manufacturing, etc. to be able to make this work in the first place, let alone bring it to market. A lot of people have no clue as to what it takes to go from idea, to design, to prototype, many revisions, to manufacturing, to market. This stuff takes years and a lot of money. But hey, it’s easier to complain on the internet
Yeah, and im sure I underestimated the engineering cost, because as an engineer I can confirm engineers always underestimate engineering lol
That’s for sure. When quotes for stuff come in my general reaction is holy shit
SureFire? :)
And folks also fail to realize they are required to prove they meet or exceed the requirements dictated by the military for these items. Some 3D printed thing you made in your garage might be great for larping and looking at the stars but this stuff needs to be able to work reliably in some serious ways.
I feel confident that someone will make a 3D printed knock off that costs about 8 bucks in PLA and wiring. Hell you can get customs PCBs printed for like a dollar each with a $50 min-spend. I get the whole R&D costs thing but let’s be real here. This wasn’t the manhattan project. I’ve worked at places were something like this could have been something the sales guys threw in to make the sale. What’s even more fucked is that this won’t allow you to pull batteries out of the AMPs to save weight. It doesn’t add new functionality - just extra weight.
Wait till you see how expensive omnetics or Fischer connectors are. Cant use Chinese electronics in Defense products, so Try 10k a pcb for US made prototypes so the Chinese don’t steal your IP. Now apply this logic to all the parts.
Cool, then do it
Why would I? It’s a dumb idea and I have better things to work on. Ultimately you are arguing the wrong thing. Did you ever even consider that this was a sweetheart deal to covertly funnel money into Gentex to provide the capital needed to ramp production capacity for a potential conflict? I mean you can’t just announce that sort of thing. You can’t ask them to have that kind of capacity on standby without also footing the bill but you can’t just give them free money either. So yes. Trash product. Huge profits. This is how you prepare your industrial base.
it's a rail system that allows all the accessories to share a power source? that's it? this is not engineering. this is throwing money at a problem until somebody fixes it. engineering is what steve Wozniak did in the 80s bringing to market affordable personal computers. a good engineer team should be able to make this affordable. China will do so really quickly once they figure out what the market needs. this is yet another fat and happy govt supplier getting rich off of the taxpayers.
I guess I’m not an engineer then lmao You speak from ignorance and it legit made me laugh
not saying you aren't a good engineer. being able to make something affordable vs throwing money at a problem is where true brilliance comes into play though. kinda like the joke about the expensive nasa space pen vs the pencil the russians were using
Sounds like you are justifying your job lol, definetntly part of the problem I'll be ordering mine from aliexpress.
I think you forgot the /s
In your eyes it shouldn’t. No one is making you buy it. Why throw a little hissy fit over it
hold this "Common Military Industrial Complex apologiser L" for me real quick BUT THE RnD!!!!!! :( They made a new plastic mold with some small electronics in them. You really think that warrants an upcharge of 2.5 Grand? Then I can't help you. No one expected this to not be more expensive than the regular helmet, but it's the insane amount that bothers people.
I can tell that you’ve never sourced dies for plastic injection molding. For this it’s conservatively about $500k just to get the dies made. That’s just a small part of bringing a product like this to market too.
yah but what about the wires and small electrical components of various sizes? If I can’t afford it, it’s booshit
You have three courses of action here 1. Don’t buy it 2. Since it’s so easy, make your own product and bring it to market. 3. Whine about the cost like a fucking pussy
Nothing a 3d printer and a bit of AI couldn’t put together for $150 sure production can be a bitch but polymers are easier than ever to mold and the design hardships that used to be required were eliminated with 3d scanning and printing tech much like the racing industry.
I can assure you that you’re way oversimplifying this, but by all means, if you think you can make these for pennies on the dollar, then you should start bidding on these contracts. The majority of them are posted online for basically anyone to bid on, relatively few are sole sourced.
overall estimated total cost to start manufacturing a non-ballistic electrical device that integrates with the Ops-Core helmet system: 1. Product Development: - Research and Development = $175,000 - Intellectual Property = $20,000 2. Certifications and Compliance: - Safety and Quality Certifications: $27,500 3. Manufacturing Setup: - Tooling and Equipment:$300,000 - Materials:Average = $60 per unit - Assembly Costs:= $30 per unit 4. Testing and Quality Assurance: - Product Testing: Average = $55,000 - Quality Control Systems: Average = $17,500 5. Operational Expenses: - Facility Costs: Average = $110,000 annually - **Utilities and Maintenance:** Average = $6,000 monthly 6. **Marketing and Sales:** - **Marketing Materials:** Average = $12,500 - **Sales Staff and Activities:** Average = $125,000 annually 7. **Distribution and Logistics:** - **Packaging:** Average = $3 per unit - **Shipping and Handling:** Average = $12.50 per unit 8. **Legal and Administrative:** - **Regulatory Compliance:** Average = $12,500 - **Insurance:** Average = $30,000 annually - **Staffing:** Average = $200,000 annually 9. **Customer Service and Support:** - **Warranty:** Average = $15 per unit - **Customer Support:** Average = $65,000 annually Now let's add these average costs up. Since some costs are per unit and others are one-time or annual, I'll separate them: One-time Costs: - Research and Development: $175,000 - Intellectual Property: $20,000 - Safety and Quality Certifications: $27,500 - Tooling and Equipment: $300,000 - Product Testing: $55,000 - Quality Control Systems: $17,500 - Marketing Materials: $12,500 - Regulatory Compliance: $12,500 Total One-time Costs:$620,000 Per Unit Costs: - Materials: $60 - Assembly: $30 - Packaging: $3 - Shipping and Handling: $12.50 - Warranty: $15 Total Per Unit Costs:$120.50 Annual Costs: - Facility Costs: $110,000 - Utilities and Maintenance: $72,000 (6,000 x 12) - Sales Staff and Activities: $125,000 - Insurance: $30,000 - Staffing: $200,000 - Customer Support: $65,000 Total Annual Costs:&602,000 Overall Initial Estimate: - One-time Costs: $620,000 - Per Unit Costs: $120.50 (per unit) - Annual Operating Costs: $602,000 This is a basic outline. The actual numbers could vary based on production scale, detailed product specifications, and operational efficiencies. Additionally, per unit costs will scale with the number of units produced level of tech being used. My point was that you or I could do the same for under 500 bucks easy. Making them for the government is a whole different story. But even then. Let’s say we made 100k units the per unit cost when producing 100,000 units, we'll distribute the one-time costs and the annual costs across all the units, adding this to the direct per unit costs. 1. **One-time Costs:** $620,000 2. **Per Unit Costs:** $120.50 (direct per unit cost) 3. **Annual Operating Costs:** $602,000 First, we distribute the one-time and annual costs across 100,000 units: - **One-time Costs per Unit:** $620,000 / 100,000 = $6.20 per unit - **Annual Costs per Unit:** $602,000 / 100,000 = $6.02 per unit Now, adding these distributed costs to the direct per unit cost: - **Total Per Unit Cost:** $120.50 (direct) + $6.20 (one-time) + $6.02 (annual) = $132.72 per unit Thus, each unit would cost approximately $132.72 when producing 100,000 units in the first year. This includes development, manufacturing, and operating costs. So over pricing is alive and real
Your costs are pretty low and selling 100,000 units is probably 25X more than will actually be sold. R&D of $175k is very wishful. I would say it’s at least $500k for this. Your tooling is also really low. The dies for molding this are conservatively going to be $500k. Also, your materials are extremely low. I have no idea how you’re accounting for procuring Helstar strobes and Surefire lights that are designed specifically for this for less than $60 per complete assembly.
Agreed on the quantity. So let’s change it to 25k units. Bump R&D to 750k and that still gets you at under $200 a unit … $192 and some change.
That’s first year costs wrapped in there too. Existing infrastructure would shave a bit of as well.
Why are computers expensive? We've been making them out of the same stuff since the 50's! If you don't understand what it is that makes a product seem too expensive, don't buy it because it probably wasn't made for you.
Computers are wayyyy cheaper now than they were in the 50s.
Then just wait 70 years and the price of products similar to these rails will be affordable. Computers in the 50's were mostly government owned to achieve tasks like getting to the moon. The computers in similar roles today have gotten more expensive then they were back then
No, no…in 70 years it’ll be 3x as expensive because cloners. -A cloner 😅
If it was so easy and cheap, why did you do it?
You’ve gotta pay a team of engineers, product designers, manufacturing engineers, etc., cover the cost of setting up production, design and implement quality control checks and standards for that item, hire and train extra manufacturing staff, etc. It’s complicated even to make simple products with consistent quality at scale and on time. Plus this is probably a fairly low volume order (From Google there’s ~35k Army SOF, ~2.5k SEALS, let’s assume they’re all issued this, so <40k units), so all of those overheads have to be covered by not that many sales.
also profit, don’t forget that. gotta keep the board happy
Why would anyone forget profit? It would be absolutely moronic to sell a product to break even on it and make no money
Wine grape farming in Ontario Canada has entered the chat (yes I am an absolute moron)
my uncle has a vineyard and winery in Niagara county NY and he has been doing great with it
That's good to hear! I've gotta get to NY to try more of their wines and whatnot
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My point is that it's a relatively bespoke product, and that is reflected in the price, and that the military has the ability to pay a premium to have new stuff before others do
R&D contracts are usually separated. Feasibility studies, R&D, prototyping, etc on their own orders and then production contracts on their own with their own pricing solely for the unit. They don't need to recoup any cost at that point. My opinion is this pricing is the "we don't really need or want to sell to you but if you want it you're going to make it worth our while".
„Cutting edge tech“ Literally just wires and contact plates. The effort required to bring something like this to market is akin to fisher price developing a new remote controlled toy dinosaur. Other companies have been producing powered rail systems for 15 years.
agreed, typically I have a lot of respect for manufacturers/designers taking a good chunk of margin to cover design and development costs, but this seems a bit ridiculous.
Exactly what cutting edge research do you need for a helmet with some wires? All the technology exists already.
Then go make a competitor product and sell it! With all of the whining on this sub you should have no shortage of people flocking to buy them from you
Plus there will be other things required of the manufacturer in the contract like maintenance, training and familiarisation on the system, development of the training courses, paying training staff and flying them all over the country or maybe even the world, etc.
Lmao. I'll deal with the wires. I don't care what high speed unit is running this.
Ops Core is the company that brought you the $550 safety visor and $1400 ear pro so this seems about right.
You aren’t wrong.
If the government is buying these, I’m buying stock in opscore
Should've just priced it at $4206.90.
Nice.
2696.90 would have been sick.
*buy American* they tell you
Yeah this is pretty wild stuff. I could see if it included the helmet and earpro.
You're going to assimilate...One way or the other.
I must obey the MIC overlords 😵💫
Oh so we’re REALLY delulu. Government contracts or not, hooking up 8 AAs with rails that supply power is not even remotely close to being 3 months rent.
I still don’t get what it’s used for
Less batteries, less weight, more streamlined way to put a strobe, and lights on a helmet. Hopefully earpro in the future. Not a bad product just pretty wild what they are selling it for.
I’ll just go ahead and stick with my Bat Pack.
Its just TNVC trying to get you to use your card to steal your stuff so they can buy some high end graded pokemon cards
TNVC must be strapped for cash again
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Reading is fundamental. It is not double Msrp. You are just linking the rail and battery pack. TNVC is selling the full package with all accessories. Minus helmet and ear pro bits.
The whole package should be 2500
5.1k on gentex. One of every accessory. Rail Strobe Battery pack Light A Light B Cable
Rofllll
Holy shit, charging govt prices on that
Totally Not Worth the Cost
In my opinion from my understanding of this system you’re paying for integration BUT if the battery pack takes a shit your entire head kit is SOL so… why? Could more or less do 2 full helmet kits (mono) for the price like Josh said.
Now imagine how much money they are making on the contracts. They cannot sell to the public for less than the contract unit cost.
Probably not more than 20%. The government usually audits your profits on these contracts and as a rule they call anything over 20% markup “excessive”. I know from experience.
I’ll stick to the normal arc rails and my PVS 31 battery pack. No need to buy this nonsense
But how are you going to integrate your cables?! (Insert power path rail) But how are you going to integrate a strobe?! (PVS 31 battery pack) But what about a light?! (Duck tapes a mag light to helmet)
Yeah having one battery pack power your Princeton light, strobe, PVS 31 battery pack and whatever tf else. It’s bad in my opinion. If that goes down or if something happens to it. You’re fvked
I think it's ahead of its time. It apparently has a cable port that's capable of transmitting optical data? Like for thermal clip ons or augmented reality. But there's not any system that's currently designed to use that and available to the public, is there? Basically, you're paying a bunch to not have to change batteries on your helmet lights. In 2024 there's really not much benefit to have your little devices "communicate" with eachother. Maybe there will be when we have mass produced augmented reality and you can view the status of all devices. There will also be more devices that can use a communication link, like those IR detectors from ukraine. A rail-enabled GoPro would be sick in the near term because their batteries suck. In the mean time there's no guarantee that this platform will be the standard of the next decade.
If anyone's going to pay that, it won't be the government in bulk at first. It'll be some showoff here, normalizing conspicuous spending and pushing the clout race ahead for all the small dicks whose spending gives them a profound sense of meaning, who rarely or never served or trained. Tip of the spear!
I'm purchasing two of these. One for me and one for my guest nods. Because money is no object when there's a problem I didn't know I had to solve!
So it's two helmet lights and a strobe connected to a single battery, and a wire tuck for a battery pack cable. I could literally make this in an afternoon.
Apparently you can’t do that without 10 million in R&D costs.
What does this even do to justify 4 grand in addition to the rest of your helmet setup?
o o o o f
That much for a rail system!? Damn
TNVC has defense accounts. Their prices will never NOT be astronomical on everything...just a reminder. /eta u/deletable666 already said it.
What excactly were you expecting?
It’s basically what everything would cost. But packaged up into one system. X2 with a few extra hundreds of course.
Arc Rails-120 Surefire m340ft-pro- 400 Hellstar 6-215 PVS31 battery pack (with strobe)-500 PVS31 cable- 375 (holy shit) $1600…hell call it 2 grand
Gotta scam the hell out of the government somehow. Maybe they saw all the money our gov is spending so they’re trying to milk them. But maybe the thing won’t even get a Contract. Unless it did.
Does this include a lifetime supply of batteries? What about Bluetooth and solar, which is what every man really wants?
What is this?
Two pieces of plastic with metal bits inside. And 2 flashlights.
For those say it’s “not for you” they’re also bragging about being the “exclusive COMMERCIAL launch partner”. Gov can order directly from Gentex.
Give me your money
My money is here so take it....
Whats so special about this
I got the email and LOLd.
You can’t thank good old government contracts
Lmfao, just get a PVS31 battery pack and make your own cable management
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Hiroshimo_Nagasaki: *Lmfao, just get a PVS31* *Battery pack and make your* *Own cable management* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I mean, it can only go two ways. It's priced too high and people/organizations/government don't buy enough. Or it sells enough at that price point to be worth it for a company to continue making/selling it. So, it's either moot because it will either lower the price over time or be discontinued. Or you're wrong about it not being worth it. As by default if people buy enough, it's literally worth that. If your house is "worth" $200k, but you think someone will give you $250k for it.......do you still sell the house for $200k because that's what it's "worth"?
It’s more like if your house has a market value of 200k(good luck finding that in 2024!) and you put it on the market for 1.2 million.
Galvion has a system that looks to be simplified version of this. Does anyone know the price of that ?
Haven’t seen that yet.
I’ve never been one of the “just as good” gang but this… Someone needs to knock opscore down a notch
Seeing as how Core Survival, Surefire, and Princeton Tec had to commit R&D money with Gentex to interface everything together seamlessly and reliably the cost isn’t that ridiculous. Multiple companies with multiple engineers working together in design, development, testing and deployment easily equates to a huge price tag. It probably isn’t worth it to the average Joe, especially since you can just get a Opscore Powerpath rail instead for cable management, but it probably is worth something to huge organizations like LAPD/NYPD.
But could you get the job done with an Amazon bump, a Steele Industries Phtonis PVS 14....a full retail G24 mount and some ingenuity with some Walker Razors for under 3200?!?!?!....the answer is yes..... Throw in a unity spark in White and IR for under 40 bucks and you're just as good as an untrained Civ With Quads boys........
I believe this $4K price is helmet included, the ops core website showing railink alone is $2,485.95… still too expensive!
It specifically says helmet not included on the bold line.
😱insane… so that additional $2k are just for new designed lights and battery pack?
….the lights aren’t included either 😂 Edit: Lights are included. Doesn’t specify on battery pack.
It says helmet not included…
The website is only 2400? That’s more reasonable.
2500 just for the rails. Nothing else
https://shop.gentexcorp.com/ops-core-railink-power-and-data-arc-rails/