Adversaries spend 100k for a military grade drone. What do shoot it down with? A 1M dollar Patriot? Whatever you choose will be orders of magnitude more expensive than the drone.
Israel’s Iron Dome has the same issue. It costs massively more for defense than attack.
And the cost of the plane is also complex. This pilot/aircraft renewed some quals on this flight, reducing training needs. The aircraft was likely going flying that day anyway. So the net cost of the operation was likely minimal.
It’s alarming many leaped to suggest LEO satellites obviate the need for balloons/drones/spy planes because it really isn’t true; there are some things for which a proper resolution and capture is simply only possibly with proximity, at least more than a satellite has. In fact that’s why we still use U-2 spy planes (upgraded) and did for the balloon.
Given the number of unidentified drone/balloon incursions reported by the Pentagon in the last few years near ships and air force bases I do wonder what’s been exposed about our radars and or datalinks. It also doesn’t necessarily matter that the data is encrypted (a weird refrain I saw) because the operating frequencies and behavior of the emitters on our aircraft, ships is in and of itself valuable information.
I’m sure that NORAD doesn’t use their most advanced sensor platforms in such a circumstance, but there could be all kinds of interesting close range data to collect on the aircraft and weapons systems used to respond.
If I remember correctly, the F-22 Raptor is the champ in terms of highest ratio of service required per hour of flight (40:1).
The F-35 clocks in at 4-8 hours of service per hour flown (6:1).
One example from the article linked below:
USMIL budgeted $39m dollars for the blue angels to fly 69 days in one year. It's up to 11 F/A-18 Hornets at once, but in my experience they only fly for a couple of minutes for a show.
Plus, who knows what kind of math games the military plays in terms of budget reporting. Operating commercial aircraft is already very expensive, and military craft are an order of magnitude moreso.
The planes are beautiful, though <3, and remain operationally effective.
https://www.inverse.com/article/33711-military-flyover-costs...
Edit: Good points @elif and sandworm101, thank you!
It's not like they leave their best toys in the toybox all year.
