Shopping List: Javelin, Stinger And More

Many items have not changed much in the Army’s missile budget. The Javelin shoulder-launched anti-tank missile, $236k per shot last year, is now down to $202k. However, the order is only for 645 missiles for the entire Army, so these may not go far. Some 10,000 Javelins were shipped to Ukraine, but these are not much seen now and the biggest tank killers are $500 FPVs.

Another U.S. weapon fielded in Ukraine is the Stinger shoulder-launch surface-to-air missile, used against Russian Shahed attack drones. Wikipedia quotes $120k per missile based on 2020 numbers. The budget documents show that the latest batch actually cost $404 million for 565 missiles, or $737k each. This does not mean they should not be used to shoot down incoming $50k drones – saving lives and preventing damage is still important – but Stingers look unsustainable in this role.

Hence the applause when the U.S. produced the APKWS (“Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System”) as a counter-drone weapon, seen in Ukraine fired from the Vampire ground-based launcher. APKWS has been around for some time as an alternative to Hellfire against ground targets. It is a basic 2.75” rocket fitted with steering fins and laser seekers, and can be upgraded with a proximity fuse for aerial targets.

Wikipedia quotes a price of $22,000 per APKWS missile based on 2018 numbers; various other figures, generally from $25,000-$40,000 get quoted. However, it turns out the actual cost, according to the Office of the Comptroller, is $85k. (This is less than allies pay; a recent sale to Israel came to $99k per missile including support.)

Again this is not ideal for shooting down waves of low-cost drones, which is why Ukraine increasingly uses small FPV interceptors like the Stinger made locally by Wild Hornets costing around $2.5k each. These interceptors have been a popular item with Gulf States recently who have started using the Ukrainian hardware to stop Iranian drones. You can now buy a Chinese interceptor drone yourself on eBay for $6,999.

Patriot Games

Small drones are no good at stopping ballistic missiles – though they can destroy the launchers. To intercept a missile you need the U.S.-made Patriot. These missiles are in short supply, and President Zelensky has repeatedly stressed how urgently Ukraine needs more.

But the U.S. needs all the Patriots it can get. The conflict with Iran has used up an estimated 1,060-1,430 Patriots, and further military action might require many more. A conflict with a peer power would place even greater strain on stocks.

No surprise that these anti-aircraft/anti-missile missiles are a big feature of the Army’s missile budget. Each MSE missile for the Patriot costs $4,987.857. The original budget request called for 244, recent expenditure has pushed the requirement up to 2,798 Patriot missiles.

That number will cost a cool $12 billion, or a third of the Army’s missile budget – more than the defence budget of most countries. Pakistan and Sweden, both of which face serious threats on their borders, each have defence budgets of around $12 billion.

Even with ramped up production the U.S. will not have many Patriots to spare for allies. This is why Ukraine is now looking to produce Patriot missile itself under license. The country is also building its own alternative Freyja anti-ballistic missiles which will cost less than $1m each. Some sources suggest that the Freyja will be as little as $500k or one-tenth as much as a Patriot. It will be less capable, but what is needed now is mass.

Offensive Capability And Low Cost Opetions

The U.S. is also replenishing is offensive missile capability. Something over 1,000 of the pre-war stockpile of around 3,000 Tomahawks has been launched at Iran so far. These are being replaced at a cost of $2.3 million each.

When it comes to the more advanced capabilities things get expensive. The Army’s new Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles carries a smaller payload than the Tomahawk, but thanks to its high speed and maneuverability it should be impossible to intercept. This capability comes at a price though, with Dark Eagles costing $39,038,500 each, or about 17 Tomahawks And with only two being purchased this year, they be reserved for extra-high-value targets.

Down at the tactical end, where drones are now a major feature of warfare, there is still some expensive hardware. The LASSO (“Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance”) program is essentially a sophisticated, tube-launched version of Ukraine’s cheap FPVs, and comes in at $148k a shot. Next up in size is LRPM (“Long Range Precision Munition”) a helicopter launched attack drone with longer reach than traditional helicopter weapons like the Hellfire missile. The Altius-700 was selected for this role, at a cost of $325k each.

The poster child for the new affordable attack capability is the Army’s band new LUCAS (“Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System”), a clone of the Iranian Shahed-131, used against Iran in February. This is widely quoted as costing around $35k. However, this does not appear in current budget documents and no contract details have been published. Unlike many other weapons, the actual cost is impossible to verify. It is also impossible to tell whether LUCAS is now being acquired at volume; for compaision the Russians launched around 54,000 Shahed-types in 2025.

Similarly, the U.S. Army’s Drone Dominance Gauntlet aims to acquire some 300,000 FPVs achieving a price per drone of just $2,300. However, the project is in its early stages. It is not yet clear if any of the many competing contractors can deliver what the Army wants within this budget and at the scale required.

The world is changing. The Pentagon’s proposed $55 billion DAWG drone initiative may produce a huge fleet of affordable new drones, or modest numbers of something more like traditional munitions. Big contractors may continue to enjoy steadily rising profit percentages.

Defense budgets are a strange world of their own, but following the money can be an interesting exercise.