The United States has assembled an arsenal of acronyms to counter advances in diverse missile technologies that make these often-mobile, ever-evolving, and ubiquitous weapons systems relatively inexpensive to attack with, but increasingly costly to defend against.
Since October, U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers in the Red and Aden seas have knocked down numerous drones and at least four Quds-2 cruise ballistic missiles targeting Israel and commercial ships launched by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, including twice since Dec. 3.
Pentagon officials told the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee during a Dec. 7 hearing that the Navy’s anti-missile missile systems work well in tracking and simultaneously zapping from the skies an array of varied threats.
But according to Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), the anti-missile systems are “on the wrong side of the cost equation. At the end of the day, it is a simple numbers game. Those [Navy] interceptors have a per-unit cost of $2 billion, more than double the cost of the [Quds] cruise missiles they shot down.”
While a cost-benefit analysis in saved lives is incalculable, Army Brig. Gen. Clair Gill,…
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