Recently, the topic of Iran's launch of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles against Israel and the low penetration rate has aroused widespread attention. Some people who boast about Israel believe that Iran's missile technology is so bad that it is just scrap metal. If we analyze it only from a technical point of view, it seems a bit embarrassing that Iran has launched only ballistic missiles, which are high-penetration weapons, and that it has failed to penetrate the Israeli anti-missile system in a large proportion. But if you do the math of the economy, or if the conflict becomes prolonged, it's a different story.
First of all, we must realize that even if Israel's anti-missile system is high-end, it does not necessarily have much ammunition reserves. Once the conflict becomes protracted, as long as Iran continues to launch drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, the Israeli military will soon find itself in an embarrassing situation of having no guns and no ammunition. Such a situation has appeared in Ukraine now, where the Ukrainian army once fired 30 Patriots in one night, and now Russia's subsonic cruise missiles can blow up the power plant, indicating that the ammunition of the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces is almost exhausted.
Secondly, if we are calculating economic accounts, then it is interesting. Do you know how much Israel spent on firing anti-aircraft missiles overnight? The answer is $1.33 billion. If we are talking about ballistic missiles shot down by arrow systems, cruise missiles shot down by other air defense systems, and drones shot down with fighter jets, the IDF chief of staff and former financial adviser Aminoch, adding up to a very staggering figure. The cost of an Arrow anti-missile missile is as high as $3.5 million, a missile of the David Slingling Air Defense System is $1 million, plus the cost of a combat missile launched by a fighter jet sent by Israel, and so on, a total of about $1.3 billion. This is without accounting for the cost of intercepting Iranian missiles and drones by the U.S. Air Force and warships, and the involvement of British fighter jets and French warships in defensive combat operations, which is estimated to be more than $1.5 billion if all the costs of these countries in the course of the war are added together. The latest news is that the US military used seven "Standard-3" to shoot down four Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles, and the total cost was $140 million.
You know, this is just the cost of a day's defense operation, and once these missiles are depleted, they will not be able to be built in a short period of time. Therefore, don't look at the Israeli cowhide blowing loudly, if you really dare to fight Iran, and the consequences of a few more waves of missile strikes will be very sour.
So, how much did Iran spend on the missiles it used to strike Israel? This is another shocking statistic. According to Western media, the average cost of each Iranian cruise missile and ballistic missile with a range that can reach Israel's is only $100,000, while the cost of a drone is about $10,000. In other words, even if Iran fired 130 ballistic missiles at Israel, it only cost $13 million. According to Iranian media, Iran spent less than $60 million on the overnight attack. In other words, the ratio of spending on both sides is 1:25, and the defensive actions taken by Israel and the United States cost 25 times more. The Americans estimate that Iran has more than 3,000 low-cost ballistic missiles in its stockpile, and that it has a well-established industrial production chain that can continue to produce such weapons at a very cheap cost.
Therefore, when we look at the missile war of attrition between Israel and Iran, we should pay attention to the technical level of offensive and defensive weapons of both sides, as well as the manufacturing cost of missiles. For China, our greater advantage is that not only do we have a much higher level of technology for ground strike missiles, but we can also create long-range strike weapons in a cheaper way. For example, the United States costs $40 million to manufacture a Dark Eagle main supersonic missile, and China may only need $1.5 million to manufacture a DF-17, which is the difference in industrial strength. In order to prepare the weapons needed to complete reunification, of course, we can also manufacture more cheap strike weapons, including gliding bombs, long-range rocket artillery, land-launched gliding bombs, cruise missiles, suicide drones, stealth cruise missiles, and so on. For China, of course, we are in a better position to dominate the rules of the game for the cost performance of long-range strike weapons, because the advantages of the industrial chain are on China's side.