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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.
We call it a "golden hammer". Only in this case it's a single-use golden hammer.
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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 $10,000 tank or aircraft decoy is sort of the same problem from an economic perspective. I mean, the same things that come into play there (i.e., how can tell what is a real threat to me and what is not) are also in play in the drone scenario. If they fire off a multi-million dollar munition at every little thing that twitched then any army would eventually run into problems. Plus, one of the main things which a battlefield commander is supposed to do is figure out what the real threats are and filter out the things that aren't real threats (a really difficult problem in most circumstances).
I guess I don't see what is special about this particular scenario. This problem has existed for decades.
The problem with free stuff. When you are getting the Patriot missiles free from the US but the bullets from a rifle are paid by your national govt, the Patriot is the more cost effective solution.
Children in US dont have healthcare because the govt is busy spending billions on hight tech toys like Patriots.
**Life is too short to be serious**
For the price of a Patriot missile, the enemy could have bought 1,500 drones to overwhelm air defenses with multiple targets.
I mean, we're talking consumer drone so we're talking what? ~500 feet (~150m) and 100 mph? (~160kph)
Why don't they simply shoot at it with their rifle?
Elok
Let's talk about the F-35 in this context, shall we....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And you believe this?
The US has a 3 trillion dollar budget. Even if the Armed forces had 1/3 of that (it doesn't) you would say it can't account (meaning lost or stolen) over 6 years worth of funding.
And you believe your bull$hit? Or is it that you didn't think about what you were reading?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
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.