You're reaching too far. Munitions are expensive, stockpiles are finite, and the US government does not like to (and cannot quickly) increase the rate of produc

You're reaching too far. Munitions are expensive, stockpiles are finite, and the US government does not like to (and cannot quickly) increase the rate of production from the low peacetime rate. If using munitions translated immediately into increasing production, the US wouldn't be drawing down emergency stockpiles from around the world to supply Ukraine with 155mm artillery ammunition. > When you give the military free reign to use sidewinders domestically, suddenly they are burning them up at half a million dollars a pop. No, they are using the cheapest weapon most likely to work, given the public/political demand that "something" be done. It is not an ideal weapon to deal with balloons, but it (clearly) mostly works. > They even somehow "missed" one of the shots too, that didn't get too much coverage. It's not surprising. The sidewinder is designed to track aircraft, and ignore decoys (e.g. flares). Balloons don't look like aircraft, they don't move like aircraft, they don't have a significant thermal signature (some contrast, when approached from ahead/below with clear (cold) sky behind them), and they definitely don't have the kind of IR/UV signature that dual-band seekers (like the Stinger or SA-18 have) are looking for. The reason to use the sidewinder is that the other missile carried by US interceptors, the AMRAAM, is both way more expensive, and requires some sort of radar signature (and likely some sort of "plane-like" flight characteristics, to avoid decoys like chaff) that a balloon without a radar reflector is not going to have.