Air defense: what does a single shot really cost?

Описание: Three air-defense systems, three prices per shot:
1) DragonFire laser (UK): "The laser system costs just £10 per shot", says the UK Ministry of Defence (Nov 20, 2025) – about $13 at ECB reference rates of Sep 21, 2026. The same announcement covers a £316 million contract for the systems themselves.
2) Iron Dome Tamir interceptor: roughly $40,000 to $50,000 each according to recent estimates collected by the CSIS Missile Defense Project. There is no official unit price.
3) Patriot PAC-3 MSE: $3,850,843 per missile in the US Army's fiscal year 2025 budget – $3,330,885 for the missile, $212,198 for required ancillary hardware and $307,760 for "producibility resilience".

On a log scale the prices span about five orders of magnitude. One PAC-3 MSE costs as much as about 290,000 laser shots at £10, or about 77 to 96 Tamir interceptors (based on the estimate range).

How to read the numbers: these are prices per shot or per interceptor, not the cost of the systems (launchers, radars, lasers) and not a statement about effectiveness – the three systems are built for different threats and ranges. Different years and sources; the £ to $ conversion uses ECB reference rates.

Sources:
UK Ministry of Defence and Luke Pollard MP, "Boost for Armed Forces as new laser weapon takes down high-speed drones", Nov 20, 2025: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/boost-f...
CSIS Missile Defense Project, "Iron Dome": https://missilethreat.csis.org/defsys/iron...
U.S. Army, FY2025 Budget Estimates, Missile Procurement, Army, Exhibit P-5, MSE Missile: https://www.asafm.army.mil/Portals/72/Docu...
European Central Bank, euro reference exchange rates, Sep 21, 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1490 USD = 0.85780 GBP).

#AirDefense #Patriot #IronDome #DefenseBudget #shorts