An Army general says an ally used a $3 million Patriot missile to shoot down a $200 drone

A US ally reportedly used a Patriot missile to shoot down a drone aircraft worth just a few hundred dollars, according to a US Army general.

Gen. David Perkins, commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, related the incident to an audience at an Association of the US Army meeting in Huntsville, Alabama, on March 13.

Perkins relayed the anecdote when his remarks turned to how address threats at different levels of command.

“When we started first dealing with enemy unmanned aerial systems, the gut instinct was that’s an air-defense problem. That’s an air-defense problem because they’re in the air,” he said, adding:

“And, in fact, we have a very close ally of ours that was dealing with an adversary that was using the small, quadcopter UASes, and they shot it down with a Patriot missile. Now that worked. They got it, OK, and we love Patriot missiles, and I know those folks out there that build them and sell them and they’re great. They’re a high-demand, low-density item.”

“The problem is on the kinetic-exchange ratio, the Patriot won. That quadcopter that cost $200 from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against a Patriot. So on the kinetic-exchange ratio they won.”

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Featured image courtesy of the U.S. Army.