https://www.thedefensepost.com/2024/01/03/nato-buys-patriot-missiles/?expand_article=1
NATO members in Europe have signed a contract for up to 1,000 Patriot missiles to bolster air defenses in the face of the threat from Russia.
I know Patriot missiles are relevant to traditional airframes... But aren't they completely irrelevant when it comes to drones? I'm pretty sure each missile costs at least 1000x the price of what it's most likely to be aimed at.
Edit: at four million a missile it's closer to 10000 or 100000x
Patriots are part of a layered air defense system that focuses on more valuable targets, whereas smaller air defense systems and units intercept UAVs.
Example
These aren't for the small disposable drones. They're for other missles and large aircraft. For the missles in particular, you should also factor in the potential cost of the damage they'll cause if not intercepted.
4 000 000 a missile, 100 000x times more expensive than a military drone? what military drone costs $40?
I don't know what models are in use today, but a Bayraktar TB2 costs 4 million.
I think they're referring to the cheap drones that Ukraine and Russia have been using. They're very simple and can't carry much of a payload, but they're incredibly inexpensive and easy to produce.
Even the cheap wedding drones that were converted at the start by Ukraine were in the $400 range. Now the cheapest quadcopters they’re using are $1000 on the low end, with the ones Russia is using have a low end $35,000 price tag. Still ridiculously cost effective compared to a Patriot Missile.
Yeah but the use case of patriot missiles is not shooting down rc quadcopters so this whole line of argumentation is just kinda useless
The Ukrainians and houthis are having successful attacks with consumer drones that have hand grenades or ieds taped to them. You don’t need a “military grade” drone to fly an explosive where it shouldn’t be
You aren’t going to take out an arms warehouse, a bridge, or anything of tactical meaningfulness with a grenade drone.
They are good for taking out soft targets but that’s about it. Their use is extremely limited as grenades are only good as anti-personnel weapons.
Comparing them to Patriot missiles is silly. Different uses.
They wouldn’t use Patriot missiles on targets where grenades are effective.
A block of c4 is as easily taped to a drone as a grenade and that will take out the targets you mentioned.
A block of C4 would put maybe dents in the type of targets that Patriot missiles are designed for.
You also need to be within vicinity of your target to be able to operate a drone, which a missile doesn’t need.
Drones can be easily jammed. Missiles aren’t easily jammed, not with the same tech stack needed for drone jamming.
Apples and oranges. Different targets, different engagements, different applications entirely.
I’m not saying they replace Patriot missiles, obviously that’s not the case. I’m just saying you can cause a lot of damage with a $100 dollar drone and some c4, pretty similar damage to a $400,000 missile. The missiles aren’t really showing their cost-impact ratios to be good if what the Russians are spending on Ukraine is to be taken as evidence
Don't forget scouting. Giving soldiers in the field the ability to poke one over a hill can be useful. A $25 FPV drone off Amazon can do that job if that's all you can afford.
Not that you'd use a Patriot against that, either.
soft targets
now that's a multiple meaning I can get behind. soft, pudgy, vodka filled targets.
Both Russia and Ukraine are heavily reliant on consumer drones from the likes of DJI. Those run in the 1000-4000 dollar range.
They are also used against hypersonic missiles the Russians have (kinzal etc.) and ballistics like s300 and s400.
You might want to put the hypersonic part in quotes, they're basically just really expensive ballistic missiles that fly slightly faster. Considering their price tag, Russia would have probably been better off never developing them anyways
Yes, but afaik the hypersonic term applies to weapons over mach 4. NATO also adds additional requirements for hypersonics, such as manourerability. But they have enough speed to qualify.
One could argue that, sure but if only the speed is important the nazi V-2 would qualify as a hypersonic
Yes exactly, also each icmb would qualify (during re-entry they also pickup "some" speed).. but it seems like hypersonic is sort of a marketing sticker thing, like "green" and "low fat".
The NATO hypersonics that are being worked on should be able to make evasive manouvera at speed, will be interesting to see.
Yes they are, but in this conflict the Russians reconfigured some of them and use them in a ground to ground attackrole.
They had shortages of other tactical weapons and apparently a nice stockpile of these missiles.
Kinda feels like we should add a 0 to that, given the jiggery-pokery that China is also getting up to these days. I’m sure Taiwan wouldn’t mind a few shipments of the anti-ballistic variants.
10,000 missile x 4 million dollars = 4 billion dollars. Maybe this is why I stopped checking how expensive war is, it makes it more depressing when we talk numbers.
Taiwan has seven Patriot batteries. For reference, Ukraine initially got two Patriots, and a third one in December. They have to cover a lot more territory than Taiwan, but they've basically shut down Russian missile attacks. Including Russia's hypersonic missile, which is a very important datapoint for military planners to know.