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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.
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.
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 $10,000 tank or aircraft decoy is sort of the same problem from an economic perspective. I mean, the same things that come into play there (i.e., how can tell what is a real threat to me and what is not) are also in play in the drone scenario. If they fire off a multi-million dollar munition at every little thing that twitched then any army would eventually run into problems. Plus, one of the main things which a battlefield commander is supposed to do is figure out what the real threats are and filter out the things that aren't real threats (a really difficult problem in most circumstances).
I guess I don't see what is special about this particular scenario. This problem has existed for decades.
The problem with free stuff. When you are getting the Patriot missiles free from the US but the bullets from a rifle are paid by your national govt, the Patriot is the more cost effective solution.
Children in US dont have healthcare because the govt is busy spending billions on hight tech toys like Patriots.
**Life is too short to be serious**
For the price of a Patriot missile, the enemy could have bought 1,500 drones to overwhelm air defenses with multiple targets.
Can I at least get the video so it's not a complete waste of my tax dollars?
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
I mean, we're talking consumer drone so we're talking what? ~500 feet (~150m) and 100 mph? (~160kph)
Why don't they simply shoot at it with their rifle?
Elok
[...] for companies that cant afford Patriot Missiles?
The last thing we need is to have companies, most likely corporations, arming themselves with Patriot missiles.
And you believe this?
The US has a 3 trillion dollar budget. Even if the Armed forces had 1/3 of that (it doesn't) you would say it can't account (meaning lost or stolen) over 6 years worth of funding.
And you believe your bull$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
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 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!
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 $3M to prevent (or suffer hundreds in thousands in damage, if you don't prevent it), then I'm going to very quickly win any war of attrition.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
And you believe this?
The US has a 3 trillion dollar budget. Even if the Armed forces had 1/3 of that (it doesn't) you would say it can't account (meaning lost or stolen) over 6 years worth of funding.
And you believe your bull$hit? Or is it that you didn't think about what you were reading?
That figure came from a DoD Office of Inspector General report:
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management & Comptroller) (OASA[FM&C]) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis (DFAS Indianapolis) did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter journal voucher (JV) adjustments and $6.5 trillion in yearend JV adjustments made to AGF data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation. The unsupported JV adjustments occurred because OASA(FM&C) and DFAS Indianapolis did not prioritize correcting the system deficiencies that caused errors resulting in JV adjustments, and did not provide sufficient guidance for supporting systemgenerated adjustments.
If the DoD can't accurately track where they are spending money today, how do they know they need more money, or if they do, where they need to spend it?
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.