> Low volume, life critical, has to survive harsh environments and have a minimal failure rate, has to go through many rounds of design specification and verifi

> Low volume, life critical, has to survive harsh environments and have a minimal failure rate, has to go through many rounds of design specification and verification, has to be backwards compatible a long way... etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the 'low volume' part of that statement can be revised a year from now. They're being used up at a pretty fair clip right now; Ukraine has been provided 7,000 so far, which is about a third of the US inventory. Current production volume is only sufficient to replace those in a bit over a year, which is giving a few folks the heebie-jeebies, and who knows how many more will be sent, and whether there will be a push to enlarge the US stockpile. So, current production volume is almost certain to be ramped up to replenish the inventory faster, and I would bet that at the same time production capacity will be modernized and ramped up even more (since it looks like when you need to use them, you may need to use them a lot), leading to the per-missile cost coming down, which of course may mean that they'll be handed out and deployed even more widely and used up even faster (per the Jevons paradox), which at some point even starts shortening the design iterations.