Don’t forget that the JATM doesn’t yet have the userbase, infrastructure or production scale behind it that the AMRAAM has Unit cost will drop over time for subsequent lots(R&D costs are sunk, so price reflects only Materials, Work done and Profit), especially once a second source is established and so biding for production orders can occur.
The initial LRIP Lot one run of 180 AIM-120A cost 537.4 million (4x estimates) in FY 87 dollars, that puts an AUR at ~3 million (2,983,333) each or, 1,574,814,461.54 in FY26 dollars, or just over one and a half billion USD accounting for inflation.
if i remember right, some export aim-120d sales were like $3 million per missile, while the US paid a little over $1 million. apply a similar standard to these AIM-260 sales and you get a price about 2x as much as an AIM-120D for the earliest batches which is not bad
doubt it, US makes stuff to overmatch. maybe PL-16 will give the initial version some trouble but i expect it to readily compete with or beat the PL-15
never implied that the AIM-260 will be shorter ranged or anything like that, i just pointed out that the PL-15E is an export missile with range exceeding 145km´s (not 145km´s hard)+ not in-service and information on the range of the indigenous PL-15 is basically null (and most estimates put it at 200km´s on the minimum) so you cant really compare the two
while we do know the requirements of the 260 we dont know the ones of the PL-15 afaik so you cant even go off of that
are you trying to claim that AIM260 doesnt have a longer range than AIM120D3?
and despite that is still under development and entering service, you know despite its hard requirements including a significantly longer range than AIM120?
You really want that to be the truth to the point of imagining stuff. How about you post some proof about the missile that only 2 pictures exist in public
Quick reminder that PL-15E shot down a meteor equipped Rafale in the Pakistan-India scuffles not too long ago. The publicly stated 145km range is likely pretty heavily underselling it.
PL-15 is just an outright larger missile, and it also uses dual pulse afaik, so its dubious that JATM outranges it imo. Its possible the US has a bunch of tricks in it to stretch out the range even more, like a new type of higher performance fuel, even more miniaturized electronics, a higher performance battery, etc… but at the end of the day, JATM will always be constrained by its form factor.
I seriously doubt JATM is a better missile than PL-15 at this point. China is almost garanteed to have bridged the tech gap with the US in this kind of development, if not outright surpassed them. PL-15 is already their mainstay BVR missile, and is already known to have an AESA seeker to boot. Everything publicly known to be new and “exciting” about the JATM are things the PL-15 already has, so the assumption that somehow JATM is better is purely based on cope that the US remains technologically superior, and not on publicly known facts.
Its known for a fact it was a rafale that was shot down, its known for a fact it was shot down by PL-15E (from missile debris found nearby), and its known for a fact it had meteors onboard (also from nearby missile debris).