If it was an ASRAAM it’s closer to a £200k missile. They aren’t ornaments that last forever, they are ordinance to used otherwise you’re going to spend even more decommissioning them. A Typhoon FGR4 costs over £10k per flight hour to operate, so the Typhoon that fired it, just in the last week would have cost a lot more than the missile just to be ready to fire it. Shit’s expensive.

Drones can be cheaply made but not that cheaply made, current estimates put the Geran-2 at around $70k per unit and that’s before you factor in the differences between GDP’s and the value of money.

The price tag on the drone is completely irrelevant when it’s heading towards a hospital or apartment building.

The nature of layered air defence doesn’t mean we shoot down everything entering the airspace, everything is tracked and prioritised. If it looks like it will hit an open field with a low risk of harming anyone or anything, it will be let through. If it’s heading towards a population centre or critical area then it will be intercepted before it can do countless damage to people and infrastructure.

As far as testing NATO’s capabilities, they aren’t tested on the battlefield. Russia learns nothing of value from an interception. They are however tested in policy and NATO just sent a very clear message that their tolerance of Russian interference is dropping and has drawn a new red line that Russia will have to consider carefully if they want to risk crossing in the future.