Is there such a thing as a used missile?
Well slightly used I suppose, how about deployed once but unfired, item will come in original packaging (packaging will be damaged) (minor imperfection (less than 1 foot) on front or side of item)
SpaceX comes to mind
I mean, sure, kinda. Not sure the engineering is quite the same, even if some of the results are.
In a sense, maybe you could call refurbished missiles “not new”:
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2024/01/24/us-army-stinger-missiles/
The US Army has refurbished 1,900 Stinger missiles once deemed “unserviceable.”
The effort saved approximately $50,000 per round and added 10 years to the anti-aircraft missile’s service life.
Moreover, the missile has been equipped with new technology to deal with unmanned aerial systems, “a threat that Stinger was not originally designed for decades ago,” the US Army said.
I mean, they haven’t been fired, but…
He said France would also provide a “new batch of Aster 30 missiles” to Ukraine
I don’t know if the situation has changed, but at least early in the conflict, these were not successfully intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. Maybe Russia knows how to jam it or dodge it, maybe the Asters have always had some problem. That’s a really serious matter, even beyond this war, for a number of European powers, as the Aster 30 is what European navies use for ballistic missile defense. If Russia knows how to get ballistic missiles past the Asters, they can sell a weapon to random country that can drop a warhead right on, say, the Charles de Gaulle from a long ways away.
I hope that Eurosam has figured out whatever was going on and adjusted, because multiple other countries are gonna need this for their navies even outside this conflict.
Maybe it already happened and just wasn’t reported.