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> So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down?

Basically free, when you consider they were going to fly planes and shoot missiles anyway for practice.

Except the military has lots of different pots of money and lots of red tape about how they're spent. No guarantees the cost of this little escapade came out of a training fund.

> So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down?

AIM-9X looks to be around $400k, F-22 is $85k per flight hour, so, probably not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34660282

Sure. $1M for the AIM, and $100M for all the other gear and personnel involved.

What's your point?

Seems to be implying if it’s cheap enough then they could send 1 million balloons next time, and it’d be impractical to shoot them all down.

Sounds like a job for a c130 at that point. lol