Slashdot Mirror
A US Ally Shot Down a $200 Drone With a $3 Million Patriot Missile (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: Earlier this week, General David Perkins, the commander of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) spoke at the Association of the US Army's Global Force symposium, where he discussed the threats that the US military would begin to face in the coming years. One notable example is how a US ally recently shot down a $200 consumer drone with a $3.4 million worth Patriot Missile. Perkins' talk during the symposium focused on the complexity of a military organization in the field, and how the interconnected nature of air, ground, and sea forces can lead to a fragmented response to a threat between the commanders who are in charge of specific areas. [...] "The gut instinct was," he explains, "that's an air defense problem, because they're in the air." "In fact," he went on to say, "we have a very close ally of ours that was dealing with an adversary using small quadcopter UASs, and they shot it down with a Patriot missile." The problem, he said, wasn't effectiveness: the tiny drone didn't stand a chance -- the issue is economics.
I guess a potentially more interesting question is whether that drone could have done $3.4 million of damage via surveillance or something. Seems unlikely in this case, but if we're talking some kind of super top secret installation then it might be worth that kind of force to make sure it's really, really blown up.
Still worth investigating sufficient response that's more economical.
And the steak's so rare, that it's rarely there, all for the cause of economy.
I wonder if there was some conspiracy to ban it or something lest the plebes catch on that there's something amiss.
So they finally got that thing working?
$6.5 trillion missing from Defense Department
'Fact the Pentagon can't account for how it spent money reveals a potentially far greater problem than theft'
The quicker weapons are spent, the better.
What they need as a starting point is something like AEGIS, but that is plug and play onto any vehicle. Something as simple as a turret that is radar-controlled and that uses 5.56 could shred consumer drones all day. It's be a foregone conclusion if they use 7.62.
We call it a "golden hammer". Only in this case it's a single-use golden hammer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
... this conclusively disproves all of the naysayers who claim that the Patriot missile doesn't work.
So, how is this different than the economics of decoys?
I understand that the objectives are different, but dropping a very expensive GPS-guided bomb to destroy what ends up being a $10,000 tank or aircraft decoy is sort of the same problem from an economic perspective. I mean, the same things that come into play there (i.e., how can tell what is a real threat to me and what is not) are also in play in the drone scenario. If they fire off a multi-million dollar munition at every little thing that twitched then any army would eventually run into problems. Plus, one of the main things which a battlefield commander is supposed to do is figure out what the real threats are and filter out the things that aren't real threats (a really difficult problem in most circumstances).
I guess I don't see what is special about this particular scenario. This problem has existed for decades.
The problem with free stuff. When you are getting the Patriot missiles free from the US but the bullets from a rifle are paid by your national govt, the Patriot is the more cost effective solution.
Children in US dont have healthcare because the govt is busy spending billions on hight tech toys like Patriots.
**Life is too short to be serious**
For the price of a Patriot missile, the enemy could have bought 1,500 drones to overwhelm air defenses with multiple targets.
Can I at least get the video so it's not a complete waste of my tax dollars?
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
What is important is not how much the thing you destroy cost, but how much in terms of strategic gains or losses you end up with if you terminate its mission. If a 200 bucks drone can alert the enemy that you're up to something, you destroy it and to hell with the costs.
I guess I don't see what is special about this particular scenario. This problem has existed for decades.
It has a remote control quad-copter, that makes it /. gold!
I really don't get the drone fanaticism. People have been hacking RC aircraft to auto-fly for as long as integrated circuits have let them. People have been putting video cameras on RC aircraft for as long as the weight and drag values were low enough to get some air time. People have been sending live video from their RC aircraft to handheld TV for as long as the power draw and hardware bulk were manageable.
The only thing new about these "drones" is that someone else did all the hard work already.
Slashdot... discussing 2days old news!
The $200 drone did "stand a chance", as it destroyed a $3.4 million missile. That's a victory for the opposition. Very distressing to see that a high-ranking military official in the 21st Century perceives the world as if it's a reenactment of a 19th-Century Prussian military school exercise, but with cool multi-million dollar toys. What is our perception of "winning"? Our validation of the legitimacy of a "win"--mainly based on comic book morals--really has no effect over which side is actually victorious. In fact a win could simply be that one faction consistently lacks control of the battlefield, until one day it's desire and power to fight are fatigued.
I mean, we're talking consumer drone so we're talking what? ~500 feet (~150m) and 100 mph? (~160kph)
Why don't they simply shoot at it with their rifle?
Elok
The missile needs to smash into the drone then continue on to the location it was being controlled from and explode.
Get a brain people, this doesn't even pass the smell test. When did this happen? Who did this exactly, cause we don't give out patriot missile batteries to a lot of countries?
Was the drone flying directly over the patriot missile site when it was taken down? If not, how exactly did the missile take out a low flying drone? Did it explode on impact with the drone or the ground underneath it?
Video or it never happened!
Now, Mr. Defense Minister, if you've got a $1200 drone invading your airspace you might need something with a little more "horsepower" to take it out, and our engineers have got you covered there, too. Next slide.
...for the Patriot. The US Army has those? Wonderful! That like shooting the dick off a fly at 1000 yards! This is MADE IN TRUMP'S AMERICA!
For only $200, we can siphon $3.4M to the military contractor.
A very efficient use of seed money towards the prime objective.
Of course, if you goal is defense instead, their might be an opportunity for inprovement before using this at scale in a real shooting war.
I bet it made a great training video, though.
How do we know the mil didnt stage that drone as a mock threat to develop a solution for companies that cant afford Patriot Missiles?
If the combat space is going to be filled with $200 drones and $100 wheeled equivalents, then this sort of "asymetric warfare" needs an effective and cheap counter. But then, how do you prevent your adversary fom deploying the same cheap and effective technology against your expensive, offensive, weapons?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail...
Or a scud missile...?
Really we just need drone interceptors now (which at government prices will only cost $500k so it's 1/6 the cost of the system it replaces! A win!)
Sorry. I tried to read TFA, but it nearly killed me with my ADHS and all that moving garish stuff (ADS! ARMS ADS! MOAR ADS!).
In the end: did the patriot take down the drone, or not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkHaByZmbE
We know the drone is definitely dead.
$2.00 at Walmart.
This guy shot down a drone spying on his daughter with a shotgun - way cheaper than a Patriot missile.
https://www.cnet.com/news/judg...
15,000, actually. Or just 1,500 and spend the remaining $2,7M on booze for the victory party.
The only thing new about these "drones" is that someone else did all the hard work already.
Which means that instead of a handful of enthusiasts who have spent large portions of their lives in the RC aircraft community it's now hundreds of thousands of random idiots who got one under the christmas tree who know absolutely nothing at all about the RC aircraft hobby and community, who haven't even read the owners manual...
Yeah, "So whats the difference?" Right?? /sarcasm
We routinely drop million dollar smart bombs on mud huts and tents in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure our military even has cheap "dumb bombs" anymore. We fly multi-million dollar high tech aircraft over areas where the enemy barely has the ability to shoot down an old Cessna.
It's no wonder we can't afford to provide food, clothing, shelter, and basic healthcare here in the homeland.
The U.S. Is Far More Violent Than Other Rich Countries
The United States: A Most Violent Nation
The only thing new about these "drones" is that someone else did all the hard work already.
This *is* the issue. Got a grand (or somewhat less), you have a fully functional remote controlled whatever. You don't really have to RTFM (which, cruising the various forums, is completely obvious).
Same as anything electronic. The Apollo guidance system cost millions of dollars, was a large box and can be out thought by most singing greeting cards.
Progress!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The Russian ORBAT is built around a "military district" ("MD") structure where they break the country up into giant segments based on potential threats -- West, East, Central, Southern. Each MD has its own commander who organizes his entire force the way he likes it within reason and with oversight from the ministry of defense. Stavka within the MoD as Westerns remember it is now just responsible for overall training standards but each MD is its own mini-universe now. Under the "New Look Reforms" the Russians did away with military district commanders having to be ground force generals. An admiral or air force general can now command an entire MD. In fact the Eastern MD is now commanded by a navy admiral. He is the overall commander of ground, air and naval forces in his MD. He can remove an army general he doesn't like etc... All general staff officers at that level get the same training at Frunze which is their command staff finishing school. So a ground forces general can command ships. An air force general can command tanks. The result is there's no longer any thinking along the lines of "that's somebody else's problem" when a problem goes from naval to ground or air based. The competition is no longer between services but between military districts. Southern MD units want to beat Western MD units in war games etc.... It's a much better way to do things. The Chinese are adopting a similar structure.
I guess the difference here is that a $100 quadcopter with a $100 brick of C4 and a $5 detonator on it is a real threat. And if I can spend $205 on a threat that you need to spend $3M to prevent (or suffer hundreds in thousands in damage, if you don't prevent it), then I'm going to very quickly win any war of attrition.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
If we start charging our allies for the missiles, then I'm sure this won't be a problem.
> When did this happen? Who did this exactly, cause we don't give out patriot missile batteries to a lot of countries?
Israel. They never buy weapons, they just get them for free from the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, as a kind of tithe. Congress gives them 10bn USD military aid per annum, which they use to pay for things like Patriots, F-35s. In essence US taxpayer money becomes military-industrial complex private property and arabs are turned to ashes. Therefore it is logical for Tel-Aviv to shoot down a toilet lid sized quad-copter with a MIM-104 missile, because there is zero cost involved.
The difference is, that if you spot a decoy and identify it, leaving it alone is the best course of action. If you're unsure, not hitting it won't be much of a problem.
If you spot the drone carrying a small package underneath, you'd better be sure it's not flying over $3.5mln worth of infrastructure...
And yeah, the package could be styrofoam, but can you afford that risk?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
We, as in the US, tend to think that we need to use a 400 billion dollar plane to drop a 40 thousand dollar bomb on a 15 dollar tent.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Not the British. they were too busy bugging Trump's microwave to worry about drones
How did they hit such a small target with a Patriot missle? I would think that the drone wouldn't have much of a heat / radar signature and if the missile is that sensitive then a passing bird could throw it off course.
When I think of Patriot Missiles I only think of one country: Israel. No doubt that a Patriot missile was used to shoot down a terrorist drone from the Palestinian territory.
Just because a General who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend doesn't mean it happened.
Smells like fake news, repeated across multiple media sites that then makes people think it actually happened.
They have been used to shoot down 10' drones but those don't cost $200 and tend to be flying up quite a bit higher. So 10' drone becomes drone becomes $200 drone and the story evolves into being false.
of knocking out cheap drones like that, maybe a cannon that fires a bunch of lead shot like a giant shotgun or even more effective could be shot like those south american bolas it is basically a piece of rope with balls on the ends and they can be thrown and the rope tangles around anything they hit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'm not worried about swarm tactics as the other person is. I just want to bleed you dry of ammunition and money. If I launch a drone attack against you everyday it is going to cost you a missile and $3.2m to shoot it down while I am out $500. If I do this for a month (30 days), you are out $96m and I am out $15,000. Drones have a shorter lead time than missiles so the drone can be replaced faster as well. Eventually I will run you out of defense missiles and start landing hits on your infrastructure (antennas, communication whips, power lines) and then things get harder for you.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
If it was the ally then it's tier money they can burn it how they like - if it was israel then it was your money and you don't have to like it just lump it,
You can get drones with preprogrammed flight paths, it isn't a stretch to have the drone fly to a predesignated location drop its payload and fly away. All you need to do is identify a soft target (antennas, power lines, fuel tanks) that doesn't move from day to day, some knowledge of the local winds, a couple of range finders and you can program the drone to fly to a point and make its bombing run. If the target is that important, program your drone(s) to attack in a cluster around the target. The attacks can't be re aimed on the fly, but you can get around the jamming.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
They won't say who the "very close ally" is? I bet its that fucker over in the Middle East.
This is to me really neat. That a radar based missile system is good enough to track something as small and "low-signature-ish" as a drone.
Disclaimers:
a) assuming said "ally" didn't fire off a dozen missiles and finally got lucky
b) the drone is a small one, not one of the large flying wing type things.
Lol, i see we have another dumb sheep here. GLMDesigns you are now officially a stupid sheep.
In 2002 they already "lost" 2.3 trillion, Rumsfeld said so in 2002 in a speech, recorded in official transcript, reported by CBS. They kept "losing" more over the years.
More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.
By Aleen Sirgany CBS January 29, 2002
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
GLMDesigns sounds stupid, he probably design toilets or something.
ISK war won.
So here's the problem, of course not mentioned in the article. The Patriot Missle is doing a heck of a lot more than just destroying the flying drone.
A butterfly net can take down a tiny drone -- but it can't destroy the explosives being carried by the drone. It can't resist a well-thrusted drone either.
How big of an explosion does it take to destroy a mysterious flying object in a safe manner? No clue.
The Patriot missle was designed in an era where the only way to have something fly a long distance to a specific target was for it to be an expensive device. So, an expensive defense made sense.
Now, not so much.
Much like the man-with-baseball-bat-on-the-sidewalk, you can't stop a random person from flying a cheap drone onto the white house lawn. It's just not possible. Similarly, you can't stop that tiny cheap drone from carrying a major explosive -- like a marathon pressure-cooker.
And, on top of all of that, you aren't going to fire a patriot missle at a drone hovering over the white house lawn. Welcome to border vs domestic defense.
We need more red for the red whit and blue. Whoooo yaaaaa. Light em up.
Btw. The world is a violent place. Grow up little child.
They could have sent out a $50 Million AH-64 Apache helicopter and crashed it trying to chase down the $200 drone with a 30mm chain gun (M230).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Fortunately it's a war of defense spending. And the US is winning.
Drones can EASILY BEAT missiles. All they have to do is CUT POWER and fall like bricks 5 seconds before the missile reaches them. The ballistic physics dictates anything flying at speed will NOT be able to alter course faster than you can just drop away from it.
Well. 100$ won't carry that payload. You'll need a large drone. And if you can get c4 like in the movies you watch. Or make something dirty. Its still not so easy. We will see if crimes are committed. Remember, if the drone fails, you can still get caught. So people will tend to use a method to make damn sure it works. Like throwing it or planting it or just using a weapon ..
This is too much tv watching child.
Back when I worked on drones (the original $250,000 ones), doing something like this made sense.
But there is more modern tech put out by Boeing that allows mil spec crowd hunter seeker drones to swarm kill cheap drones.
Seriously, it's like $250 per drone, and the controller set is maybe $10,000, it's way cheaper to waste 2 or 3 swarm drones taking out 1 drone than using the old stuff.
Why do you think we made smart JDAM kits for dumb warheads to turn them into 98 percent accuracy from the old style? Those were way cheaper than the cruise missiles we also made, allowing a deliverable cost per unit to drop massively?
Stop using things without thinking about cost. Half of warfare is economics.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"If you must be strong everywhere, you are weak everywhere"
This is the perfect example
Bad guys fly 2000 drones per day, over the Green Zone
At the end of the year, the U.S. declares default on its open debt despite the 14th Amendment, because,you know, wars are lost for costly victory
Pyrrus would know.
Another reason people should play EVE Online.
When you have to buy your ammo to kill npc, and you find out that the bounty on the npc is lower than the cost of your ammo, priceless.
Also looking at kill mails during a war and look how much money you lost compared to the enemy in full detail.
This doesn't quite ring true to me due to a medium to long range missile like a Patriot having a minimum engagement range and altitude. I could find numbers, but a google search shows that the Patriot flies for 9 seconds before it is armed, which is quite a long way for a object that quickly accelerates to maybe ~mach 3. How high does a $200 drone fly, and how far away can you spot it on radar at that altitude?
Also, who was the US ally in question?
Reminded me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZrFVtmRXrw
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.731550
Question Who won WW2? Britain and France who lost their colonies and became second rate powers or Germany who got out of sanctions and became an economic powerhouse. Winning but spending too much to win is no win at all
Germany lost 10% of its population to the war, about 7 million people, that is a cost to be factored in as well. The UK's casualties were 6.4% of Germany's, about 450 thousand, and Frances were 8.5%, about 600 thousand. The cost of war includes blood not just gold.
Plus there was half the country becoming a vassal state of the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years. That is losing your own country, not a colony.
Yes, it is exactly the same economics as decoys.
An example of the principle in use is the decoy warheads they put in ICBMs. A hypothetical missile defense system has to get all of the rentry-vehicles deployed by the missile because any one of them could be a real nuke, but it costs way less to put 2 warheads and 8 decoys on the missile than 10 warheads. But as much to shoot down a decoy as a real warhead. So you can force your enemy to spend enough to counter 50 nukes when you only actually have 10.
In Generation Kill there was a scene where some marines were dressed down for shooting a technical with a TOW. I think the cost/benefit of munitions and targets of opportunity was one of the reasons that cannons got put back on ground strike aircraft.
For the Marines its not necessarily the cost itself but the number of TOWs available to them. The Marines are not as well funded as the Army or Navy and are adept at improvisation and making do for very good reasons. The Marines will probably purchase some long barreled high choke skeet/trap shotguns to deal with small drones. As they purchased civilian hunting rifles during Viet Nam as necessary to equip snipers and designated marksmen. Its not that such things won't happen in the Army as well, its that in the Army these ideas will largely be confined to the less senior officers. The more senior officers more likely to turn to some research project with a hollywood looking solution.
When were cannons taken off ground strike aircraft? Fighters yes, that was a bad idea of the 1960s. I believe exterior pod mounted cannons were developed for these fighters for when they were to be used in ground attack roles. And these were hastily repurposed for air-to-air once the error of a pure missile fighter became apparent.
Saw that Trump wants to spend an additional $5 billion to 'fight' ISIS. There are some estimates that have the number of ISIS fighters in Syria as few as 5,000. What if we gave each one $1 million to put down their weapons to run a falafal cart or whatever. Keep in mind the avg annual income in Syria is about $5000 versus $80k in the US so so that million bucks is really like $16 million (!). Hell for $16 million I would even wear a GPS ankle braclet for the next 10 years.
And this isn't a Trump thing, Obama and many Dems have no problems starting or perpetuating conflicts for political points.
fight smarter, not harder
Yeah, just wait til they figure out a $50 sbc can be added to fly the drones, without using a remote, to specific coordinates on the fly. One guy with a crate of autonomous consumer drone bombs and a laptop could do some serious damage. Methinks they need a better solution. MTHEL or something.
I am quite happy using rifles and grenades to shoot down bees, wasps, mosquitos, gnats, and various seafaring pests, even though it is much cheaper and faster to gas them.
I watched an interesting lecture on Youtube the other day comparing the tank manufacturing strategies of the US, Germany and Russia during WWII. It turns out that all three were different: the US used efficient assembly lines and precise tooling to mass-produce standardized tanks of mid-range cost/complexity, the Russians zerg-rushed low-quality tanks using massive amounts of cheap labor and simple tooling, and the Germans used skilled craftsmen to build high-quality tanks and constantly improved the design (so that each tank was pretty close to unique). Guess which strategy was least successful...
The strategy with the weakest anti-armor airpower. ;-)
Soviet success on the ground had a lot to do with the IL-2 Sturmovik close support aircraft. Plus there are the anti-tank guns on the ground. Tank v tank is only a part of the complex and deadly environment tankers tried to survive.
Wars of attrition have always been about cost.
So many weapons are designed to permanently main, it removes a fighter from the field and has large on going medical and social costs.
Invading forces typically pack up and go home when these costs get too high, when the voters back home loose the willingness to keep paying.
The same applies to peace treaties.
Doctrine Command ?
I start to understand why the USA is so dangerous.
Never mind "logic" just follow the"doctrine"
WWIII here we come.
My question is why does a Patriot Missile cost $3.4m - there is no way that it should cost that much in this day and age.
Only the shitty bits of the world. The other bits are really nice and their lucky inhabitants wouldn't swap their spot for one in the shit violent places.
Now be quiet and wash my car, boy.
Despite reports to the contrary, they fired the $3.4 million missile... and it missed. They can't report it as a miss though, because there's an actual clause in the contract with the manufacturer, an NDA, that requires failures to be 'classified'.
Lets look at a relatively modern concept - - - ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
This fits the definition better than anything else has over the last couple of decades.
Grab a couple of dozen 'drones' at less than $300 each, and cause the expenditure of multi-million dollar munitions to be used for EACH of them !
SOMEONE needs to fall back on the simpler, but reliable, method of using laser-tagged bazooka-style munitions to 'down' these drones.
The Viet Nam era shoulder fired rocket launchers would be ideal for this type of coverage, and there has to be a lot of these old(er) munitions stockpiled somewhere. Just because they were vulnerable to local-fire when used against tanks does NOT mean they were useless - just that they were inappropriate for that type of mission. Pull them out of mothballs, and re-task them for THIS type of mission.
Even at a few thousand dollars each, they are virtually worthless sitting buried in a munitions warehouse - but could easily be re-purposed for these types of missions - essentially using already-paid-for materials, AND freeing up storage space and logistic accountability costs.
Use the Patriot targeting systems, link to the shoulder-launched warheads for target acquisition, and blow the quad- / hex- / octo-copters out of the sky.
redneck geek
The birds of prey act as a rapid delivery and deployment system for the horse, which kicks the drone out of the sky!
The system is flexible, reusable & biodegradable. What's not to love?
go old skool - a bloody big sling shot that fires rocks
net guns. resusable (cost efficiency!), we can use the drones we net for our purposes, and there's nothing like flipping the bird at the drone cam before you disconnect it.
The solution is probably already being developed in a defense lab somewhere.
Instead of wasting a US$3.4 million missile, you deploy a force of 10 hunter-killer drones worth maybe US$100,000 each to patrol a given area.
Much like a Roomba, they know when to come back to recharge or switch battery packs. They never get tired or bored and don't complain about the MREs and missing the kids at home.
They have sensor suites for detecting other drones and can be notified by ground forces of sightings.
Not quite sure what kind of package they could be fitted with to take down another drone but I'm sure there are plenty of cheap off-the-shelf options.
A U.S. general is discussing economics in military spending? This from the same people who gave us the F-22 ($339 million for a single plane) or the Advanced Gun System ($800,000 for a single round of ammo)?
Isn’t that about as stupid as listening to an 800 pound man tell you his secrets to healthy living?
If you want to become more economically disciplined, the last place you should be seeking advice from is the U.S. Pentagon.
The cost of the drone means nothing. What is significant is the cost of the damage done if it is not brought down.
They are, of course, right about the future cost of large numbers of missiles. But that is for much later, when there will be time to find other methods (like shotguns).
And of course good training for the missileers is difficult and expensive. Quite possible that the decision was made, to provide good realistic training for the team. Which it no doubt did!
It's men at work... who can it be now!
https://youtu.be/SECVGN4Bsgg
Cue USA supplying ISIS with drones and selling Saudi Arabia a few hundred more missiles