Drone Costs Tiny Fraction of the Costs of Their Interceptors

Drone Costs Tiny Fraction of the Costs of Their Interceptors

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We have a problem in terms of a missile shortage. The president called an emergency meeting earlier this month with all the top defense contractors talking about increasing missile production. Lockheed has said they are going to quadruple missile production.

Well, that’s great. Let me just give you some numbers. Right now, they make eight FAD missiles a month for a total of 96 the entire year.

So even if you quadruple that, it’s not a lot. It goes up to about 400. And you know how long it’s going to take them to do it? In their own press release, three years.

So that’s where we are. And then you have Iran that has over 80,000 drones by some estimates and other ballistic missiles. And so they’re launching all of this at US bases, at allied countries.

And we’re firing FAD missiles and Patriot interceptors. The cost of one Patriot interceptor is $4 to $4.5 million per missile. The cost of one FAD missile is about $12 to $15 million per missile.

The cost of an Iranian drone could be as low as $20,000. This is like launching Cadillacs at baseballs. It is not sustainable.

And so I urge the Department of Defense and the administration to come up with a plan to Congress as to how they can sustain not only this war, but any future war. Because clearly, there’s a huge mismatch between the weapons that the Department of Defense has and what our adversaries are able to launch at America and our allies.