It's you who doesn't understand. We don't care how much the target costs. We care about how much not taking it down can cost us. We stand to learn a lot from c

It's you who doesn't understand. We don't care how much the target costs. We care about how much not taking it down can cost us. We stand to learn a lot from capturing the surveillance platform. This alone is priceless. We send a message that Chinese aircraft that violate our airspace and leave in tact. If data was stored onboard, it's possible that we prevented a large cache of surveillance data from making it back to China. So that $400,000 missile had a benefit that is hard to quantify, but is easily in the multiple millions of dollars. Your argument makes no sense. Let's say a sniper is in a building and is about to fire on a high value target. Before he can fire, we hit that building with a missile to take him out. According to you, we paid $400,000 to take out a sniper and his $1 bullet. The truth is that we spent $400,000 to protect a high value asset that may have been worth far more.