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.