closer to £1.6million, per sortie

There’s been 50,000 sorties flown over Iraq and Syria by American/coalition aircraft against ISIS. Weapons have been used on 8000 occasions.

It’s costing a lot of kidney machines.

I would say it is typical British understatement: from the name you have no idea whether it is a missile or an artisan cheesemaker. Reminds me of the different nicknames for the Tora Bora caves where Bin Laden was supposed to be hiding. The Americans called them “the caves of death”, the Brits “Tora Bora Tomkinson”.

the US doesn’t have an equivilent to the brimstone. The hellfire can’t be launched from fast jets as yet. The maverick is a much bigger weapon (57/136kg v 9kg warhead) and not in the same class as the hellfire/brimstone system. both the MM hellfire/brimstone and certain variants of the maverick are fire and forget. Russian equivilant would be the AT-16 Scallion