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The cost of using expensive naval missiles which can run up to $2.1 million a shot to destroy drones, estimated at a few thousand dollars each, is a growing concern according to three other DOD officials.
“The cost offset is not on our side,” said one DOD official.
“That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor,” said Mick Mulroy, a former DOD official and CIA officer. “We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”
DOD officials would not confirm what types of weapons are being used or the range at which the drones are being intercepted, citing operational security. But former DOD officials and experts said only one weapon would make sense for that job: the Standard Missile-2, a medium-range air defense weapon that can reach up to 92 or 130 nautical miles, based on the variant. The latest variant, the Block IV, costs $2.1 million a shot.
By contrast, experts estimate the one-way attack drones, which are primarily Iranian-made, cost just $2,000 at most. The larger Shahed-136 is estimated at $20,000, said Shaan Shaikh, a fellow with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
This is what happens when every general and admiral goes on the payroll for Raytheon, Lockheed, or General Dynamics after they retire.
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“We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”
LMFAO you know that’ll never happen, capitalism and the MIC can’t allow that 👀
Hold on. Why do they need missiles for that? Have they ran out of those much vaunted CIWS Phalanx? Or out of italian anti-missile gun. That one is supposed to have guided munitions specifically against missiles and light aircraft (drones)
It’s in the article, naval guns have 10nm range and aren’t very accurate against drones, though they usually hit eventually due to their volume of fire, Phalanx have 1nm range which is too close for their comfort - imagine what would happen if Yemeni drone actually manage to hit and cripple or sink destroyer worth over 2 billion, so they want to avoid that at all costs.
And iirc they didn’t send Standard missiles to Ukraine so they do have quite a lot of them to spare.
Also what Appel said ofc.
They mention Shahed 136 in the article, which AFAIK is used by the Russian army as Geran-2. From what I’ve found, it has operational range of up to 4 km and 10 kg warhead. Now I don’t know if such a warhead is large enough to be an actual threat to a destroyer vessel (anti-ship missiles tend to be larger, from what I’ve seen). But the range itself doesn’t appear to be the issue with using guns - it’s detection. Which, okay, is indeed an issue as we’ve seen with drone attacks deep within Russian territory.
But again - that doesn’t explain why they have to use those über expensive missiles.
Ah but bullets don’t have such a huge profit margin, also, we need to protect those brave navy officers, can you imagine how terrified they would be if they actually saw anything the enemy was shooting at them?
lol 10 miles is too close for comfort? The cheap drones can’t carry more than a hand grenade and they don’t have the video capability to even see a ship at 10 miles.
I think it means “too close to be detected and destroyed in time”, rather than “sailors spooked by things flying within visual distance”. If my search-fu is not failing, a Shahed 136 can cross that distance in 6 minutes.
