$3 Million Patriot Drone Takes Down Cheap Quadcopter Drone

News alert: a $3.4 million Patriot missile is a rather cost-ineffective way to take out comparatively dweeby consumer drone. And yet, this is exactly what happened when a close ally of the United States used one of the U.S. Army's favorite weapons "dealing with an adversary" that was apparently piloting the drone.

Naturally, this does not seem like a cheap way to combat small unmanned aerial aircraft on their way to do errands for enemy combatants — as effective as the Patriot missile may be. When successfully used against a several-hundred-million dollar jet, the $3.4 million surface-to-air missile seems a fair price to pay. But U.S. Army General David Perkins suggested electronic warfare (as modeled here, for example) would perhaps be much for cost-effective during a speech posted to YouTube Monday.

The news of this rather overkill response comes on the heels of a slew of stories discussing and debating government response to the availability of smaller and more affordable drones, which pose a threat to areas of both civilian and military life governed by agencies from the FAA to the Secret Service and FBI. As policy makers look for better ways to legislate drone rules domestically, directors of military operations also need to explore all options available to them, regardless of more frequently used and more conventional options such as surface-to-air missiles.

In this case, at least one thing is for sure: the bazooka did, in fact, kill the fly.

[via CNET]