There was an offer to Australia for aim260, with both quantity and dollar sum included. 485 missiles (35 being test articles) for 2.61 billion works out to $5.38 million per missile. US probably gets them cheaper and as production volume will keep increasing, price should drop even further. Still, it's likely never gonna be as cheap as AMRAAM.AIM 260 dollar procurement between FY27 and FY31 in the FY27 President's budget is $14.2 billion split between the Air Force and Navy ($8.2 billion for Air Force and $6 billion for the Navy). The number of missiles purchased is classified. For comparison, in the same proposed FY27 budget lists 10,836 AIM-120's procured over the same time period (FY27-FY31). So I think it is fair to say that the AIM-260 procurement numbers are going to be large if the budget it approved.
While Starlink aren't radar systems, a lot of Starshield satellites likely are radar based monitoring solutions. US DoD said on records that at least some of Starshield are for intelligence gathering. Starshield is sort of a broader term - US DoD satellites, made by SpaceX and using Starlink bus (chassis so to say) but with various payloads. There are probably multiple subvariants of Starshield satellites but as almost everything about that program is secret, not much is known. Yet it is a fast growing family of satellites, with something like 200 or close to that launched since 2022 (plus two test ones in 2020).I wanted to share this video I found on Twitter regarding Starlink functioning as a secret radar system used for various forms of monitoring. I am not qualified to critique this YouTuber's comments, but I hope some users here will find the information presented interesting.
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