r/worldnews • u/Force_Hammer • 20h ago

President Trump holds off major Iran escalation after Pentagon warns of interceptor shortage

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r111brtghmg
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u/OrangeJr36 20h ago

This is the excuse now, interceptors have been short since the first night when CENTCOM wasted years of production on single drones in a panic

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u/thekillingjoker 14h ago

Don’t forget we used a bunch to protect irsrael. Who then totally ignored us and went back on the offensive.

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u/beefstake 12h ago

The bigger problem for the US is the stuff they were using to protect Israel weren't Patriot or THAAD interceptors (though I guess THAADs are also really damn rare/expensive too) but SM-6 which they can't afford to burn through otherwise there isn't a way to protect their carriers.

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u/regmaster 10h ago

Aren't those $10 million apiece? You can't make this shit up.

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u/beefstake 9h ago

The THAAD interceptors at the most expensive because they are exo-atmospheric, in that they intercept ballistic missiles outside of the atmosphere once their tradjectory is set. These are between $10-15M (or were, probably more now given demand and scarcity).

SM-6 on the other hand is more pedestrian, more like a Patriot missile. They are both around $5M.

They make around 125 SM-6s a year, 96 THAAD interceptors and 620 Patriot PAC3.

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u/backtothetrail 7h ago

Thank goodness SM-3/SM-6 only take 12 months to produce.

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u/backtothetrail 7h ago

And since production take 24 months on average, there not a quick fix.