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Originally Posted by Trochu
The internet I read says they cost about $40k each. Still not super cheap, but a big difference between $150M and $6M.
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The Arrow missiles are $3.5 million a piece and that’s what they use for ballistic intercepts (that is also the only thing they can use to shoot stuff down at considerable distance from their borders, from my understanding, and that is what they did a lot of in this attack). It costs about $1 million to intercept a cruise missile. This is only considering that the first attempt is successful. When you see air defense operating, be it Iron Dome, or in Ukraine, for example, it looks like it doesn’t stop firing even when there is only a dozen or less of projectiles incoming (this is, of course, different for Arrow or something else more sophisticated, though could be during a massive attack). Once all the costs are added, including maintenance of the airplanes, because they greatly participated as well, it adds up to quite a penny. It’s super expensive (as evident by scarcity of such equipment and ammunition in Ukraine, for example; at $40K per intercept, they’d abundant, but it is measured in millions, definitely for missiles). This is also why it is problematic using such equipment for shooting down drones that are worth ten to forty or so thousand a piece or some other primitive projectiles that could be even cheaper.
I said “official statement” in my previous post, but I was wrong. It was per a retired brigade general and financial advisor to the IDF. There were no official statements in regard to cost and likely won’t be.