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Comment by arbuge | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what the prorated cost of the fighter jets and crew to shoot these things down was, but I have seen multiple news reports that the cost of the missiles was around $450k apiece. In at least one incident, two missiles were needed after the first missed.

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Roughly $85k per hour, so it cost a _lot_.

Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a41956551...

I always marvel at costs given by governments and wonder if they aren't baking in a lot of salary costs that would be spent regardless.

got to feed the outrage machine. It would be great to start to educate around terminology in this space. What would it be fixed costs vs variable costs, so only count variable costs into the equation, something like that?

These missions may not actually represent much extra cost beyond the expended weapons however. The pilots have to get a certain number of flight hours regardless of whether they come in the form of training flights or missions to keep the world safe from small mylar balloons.

Why do people keep bringing up the cost of the missile? The cost to run the us military is much more than 1 million dollars per minute.

Because if we kept thinking this way, then the cost of the military would never go down below $1m per minute.

Unnecessary spending-- and not just shooting down Arduinos-- contributes to the total spend & therefore budget

The value in training and lessons learned from these events will likely greatly exceed the value of the materials spent.

Over 525 billion dollars / year ?

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/298001...

Well over $1million / minute.

525.6B per year would be 1M/minute.

right, but who's counting? :)

So? I am not disturbed that we used 0.00001% (or whatever) of the military budget on a missile. I am disturbed that for a cost of that single missile we could replace the lead pipes in an elementary school or employ multiple teachers for a year.

I don't know why it surprises you that it costs a lot of money to research, develop, manufacture, store, distribute, and maintain low-volume cutting edge weapons technology using expensive all-American components and labor. The fact that a babysitter is paid less than the cost of a missile seems pretty unrelated. And if you think you can build a sidewinder for under $30k, please go right ahead, the country needs you.

I'll build one sidewinder for 20 gs right now.

Next time you want to shoot down a mylar balloon with one, don't.

Follow my advice and have 1 more sidewinder than in the counterfactual. How can I expect to receive the 20k?

If the missile wasn't fired, it would end up in a disposal yard. The US orders missiles and airplanes in large batches, then uses them or they become obsolete.

The cost of the missile was already baked in long before it was fired.

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