But then, if you were in Gaza right now and consider how many buildings/lives might have been saved by the existence of a whole bunch of air-to-air or ground-to

But then, if you were in Gaza right now and consider how many buildings/lives might have been saved by the existence of a whole bunch of air-to-air or ground-to-air missiles to trash bombers with, you start to wonder if having these things for the moment you need them might not make a lot of sense. Similar story for Ukraine. The only thing the missile has to do is be cheaper than the bomber it’ll destroy. To be cheaper than the infrastructure that can’t be bombed into dust because the bomber was destroyed by the missile. Taken in that light they suddenly seem pretty cheap.