Patriot missiles are in the news again
I remember the name from the Gulf War (the "first" Iraq war for the younger folks), when the idea of one missile knocking out another one ("Scuds") was first demonstrated (quite impressively, for that time).
It's relevant again in the context of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, where such systems have been provided (with more coming soon).
There was an "FAQ" article about this in the Washington Post -- what you don't get from this (or similar articles in the New York Times, sadly) is any sense of how much this costs.
For that we turn to the Congressional Research Service, which does have a good overview that mentions the cost up front.
(It's useful to pause here and try to guess the number first ...)
... a newly produced PATRIOT battery costs about $1.1 billion, including about $400 million for the system and about $690 million for the missiles
I'm adding this to my party trick of "guess-timations most people are going to fail at".
Part of the under-estimation likely comes from a mental model of watching e.g. HiMaRS in action, where a truck pulls up, aims its carriage, and fires a missile or two, before driving back.
The Patriot system has ... well, more to it:
A PATRIOT battery has six major components: a
power plant [two vehicle-mounted 150 kilo watt
(KW) generators], radar set, engagement control
station, launcher stations, antenna mast group, and
interceptor missiles (PAC-2s and PAC-3s).