US ally uses Patriot missile to shoot down $200 quadcopter

One of the more effective weapons the US military and its allies have at their disposal is the MIM-104 Patriot missile system. The surface-to-air missile is primarily used as an anti-ballistic missile these days, but one unnamed US ally recently found an unintended use for the system: shooting down quadcopter drones obtained from Amazon.

Yes, you read that correctly. Unsurprisingly, the drone was no match for the Patroit missile, which is good considering each missile costs about $3 million to obtain. "That quadcopter that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against a Patriot," General David Perkins said at a recent military symposium in Alabama.

While it sounds comical at first, this move to take out a drone with a high-end anti-ballistic missile wasn't uncalled for – at least not entirely. As the BBC points out, some groups of combatants have been weaponizing these inexpensive drones. While using a Patriot missile to take one out seems like overkill, there's certainly still a threat to address.

"It certainly exposes in very stark terms the challenge which militaries face in attempting to deal with the adaptation of cheap and readily available civilian technology with extremely expensive, high-end hardware designed for state-on-state warfare," Royal United Services Institute researcher Justin Bronk told the BBC.

So, what makes for a silly headline actually reveals something of an issue with the immense firepower the US military and its allies hold: in some cases, it may be too much. In armed conflict, having more firepower than your opponents is usually a good thing, but when you're outspending them on such a massive scale, that could create entirely different problems. Hopefully the military can come up with a better way to deal with these drones that doesn't involve super expensive Patriot missiles.

SOURCE: BBC