[JohnBooty]

The USAF (and any functional air force) has lots of flight time budgeted for its pilots: for training, patrols, etc.

Active duty pilots must fly X number of hours per month to maintain their fight status. Essentially, they practice like athletes (because they are literally athletes, among other things)

So intercepts like these, and even silly stuff like sports event flyovers, come out of their existing budgets.

To actually cost us money in some meaningful way they'd have to send over extremely large quantities of drones that absolutely blow out the existing budgets for our bases.

The missiles are expensive, of course: $400K a pop for those AIM-9X. But the budget for the USAF is ~$160B/year, so again, drop in the bucket.

[petre]

If they do that, the USAF/US Army missile defense is going to zap their pesky baloons with lasers or regular ammunition.

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/12/07/us-army-laser-stry...

So far they're offering good sport for the USAF. I'm glad they decided to take action and shoot'em down instead of letting them pass undisturbed through US airspace. This should send a clear message to uncle Xi to keep his lantern festival at home.

[JohnBooty]

    lasers or regular ammunition.

Bullets (technically, cannon fire) may not work as well as one would hope: https://eurasiantimes.com/1000-rounds-fired-why-canada-could...