Article is about the AIM-9X... shows a picture of the AIM-9M....
These missiles are very common and probably the cheapest carried by modern fighters. The only other option for US fighters is the AIM-120 AMRAAM, which costs almost double the quoted AIM-9 cost.
The question should not be whether the AIM-9 is the right weapon but rather why do these missiles cost that much when we buy them in such abundance?
The procurement for 2023 [1, p. 73] was 383 missiles (all AIM-9X) for a total of $171 MM. That's for both the USAF and the US Navy. This allows for about 1 missile per day for fire practice. Which means the vast majority of the pilots don't get to actually shoot one (there are about 20000 active pilots in the USAF and USN together).
Half a mil? Dont ask how much the airbase, personel, & runtime costs are though. These ops probably took thousands of person-hours to run. How many craft would you guess were involved? Just 1 vs adversary, or were there all sorts of support vehicles & search craft? Maybe deserved but this spotlight piece on a missile glorifies-while-obscuring more than a bit.
That said, there do seem like a bunch of reasons lasers could potentially be useful. Im curious what kind of ranges were involved here, and what kind of windows-of-engagement durations we had; could lasers give us longer opportunity windows, more or less range, better or less targetting control? It's a trope that adversaries "just add mirrors" (probably before Ringworld, but that's a well known example), but also curious there. That said, current powerlevels seem generally inadequate, but that seems addressable. Not firing expensive ammo seems good... albeit places like Iron Dome & other more active genuine-defense systems seem like better uses.
One other q I have... one of the first or second balloons, there were reports the Sidewinder had a dummy load, just weight, no explosive; a kinetic impactor, to try to preserve the payload best we could. Would be curious to know whether that was true and or whether that's happened again.
"Side"-note: I only paid like $60 for my Microsoft Sidewinder (joystick), to go play X-Wing with, back in the day! So cheap! Joke... but it is a vaguely amusing comparison of magnitudes, ~2 zeroes vs going on ~5 zeroes. And it shows how rooted "Sidewinder" as a term is.
We should certainly send China a bill for any damages and costs when their "mostly peaceful" research craft with limited maneuverability, which is illegally in our airspace and also not compliant with many FAA regulations, is accidentally involved in a mid-air collision with US military asset in which both are destroyed. In this case, and several others like it, a $499,000 un-crewed US air vehicle was also ultimately destroyed. Let alone the environmental cleanup, there is also the cost of the fighter sent in an attempt to escort, in retrospect unsuccessfully, the foreign craft to safety, fuel, ground crews, etc. It is only fortunate that no people were harmed thus far. We regret that the foreign craft was destroyed in this preventable and unnecessary accident and, regardless of fault, every effort will be made to return any recovered remains to the rightful owner once the bill for the damages is paid and ownership/title is determined.
If the judgement, in proper US courts, of the damages is not paid in a timely fashion, property of the owners or citizens thereof may be seized to satisfy the debt.
You could seize about two-dozen houses in Pasadena owned by Chinese nationals or corporations and be square.
Nope, but they can lock after launch using data from the jet's radar or helmet cued targeting. Pretty much an "It's over there somewhere. Kill anything you can see in that location/velocity." Then the sidewinder points it's sensor where the jet tells it to and uses UV/IR to find it.
The 9x is to the original sidewinder what your smart phone is to an abacus. Shooting down balloons with it is pretty wild. Even if they don't have the proxy fuses or warheads.
No laser designation needed. Aim-9x have full infrared and UV imagers in the seeker head. A white balloon in the sun floating in cold air at 60,000 feet might as well be a lighthouse
if the "smallest line item" to deal with a single balloon is a single use >$400k piece of equipment then there's a real problem. There have been multiple balloons this week, based on what you're saying each one is costing millions of dollars, which is clearly insane.
I'm also dubious that the $400k piece of equipment actually cost $400k, given that the various military contractors all seem to be super profitable.
I think your estimate of each mission costing millions of dollars per mission is not insane. You can divide the budget of the Airforce by all the missions it flies each year (leave this exercise to the reader :D).
The US Airforce budget is 194 billion per year. That is $531 million per day. I would be surprised if it wasn't millions per mission
These missiles are very common and probably the cheapest carried by modern fighters. The only other option for US fighters is the AIM-120 AMRAAM, which costs almost double the quoted AIM-9 cost.
The question should not be whether the AIM-9 is the right weapon but rather why do these missiles cost that much when we buy them in such abundance?