Cheap Drones, Expensive Solutions
Modern War Part 2: Just trying to shoot down cheap drones can wreck your budget. And you might still fail to protect their targets.
It’s been quite a while since we’ve heard of any dramatic Ukrainian successes using Turkish-built Bayraktar TB2 drones (see this article for some background on the TB2). Indications are the Russians have worked out how to intercept them and the small fleet has suffered many losses.
The TB2 is a medium sized drone with long range and loiter time that carries a surveillance system mounted in a rotating ball below the nose. Although much cheaper than a manned plane and able to carry small air-to-ground weapons, they’re not the cheapest way to deliver ordnance. At several million dollars each, these drones are certainly worth the cost of a surface-to-air missile like the expensive American AMRAAM.
A bomb that’s a different kind of “smart”
But the Russians have been using a different type of drone, especially useful for strikes on fixed targets like infrastructure - the Iranian Shahed-136 (Geran-2 in Russian service) which are sometimes jokingly called “Doritos” due to their triangular shape.
Multiple photos and videos from Ukraine show the Shahed-136s carrying out their attacks today, which involve the drones flying a one-way mission to pre-planned coordinates, which they dive on and slam into before their explosive payload detonates. It seems the sheer numbers of these drones involved in the raids made their interception difficult, although they are by no means easy to counter at the best of times, despite their relatively low-end technology. They fly low and relatively slow and have small radar and infrared signatures, making them a challenge for even advanced air defense systems. (The Drive)
With a 100 lb warhead, each drone is roughly equivalent in destructive power to a 250 lb aircraft bomb (the American SDB 2, nominally a 250 lb bomb, carries a 100 lb warhead). The Shahed-136 isn’t a glamorous weapon system but it’s cheap and it works.
That “cost-exchange” issue is critical here because the missiles being used to counter the Doritos cost many times more than the drones. The drones are too big to shoot down with a rifle (and very hard to hit anyway), but those “advanced air systems” are too advanced for the task.
While the Shahed-136 is bigger and faster than many of the small commercial drones being used in the conflict, with a fairly substantial warhead and big standoff range, its relatively low cost (reportedly around $10,000 to $20,000 apiece) means it’s a significant cost-exchange mismatch to use surface-to-air missiles or even fighter jets firing missiles to defeat them. (The Drive)
Estimates of the cost vary but the $10k to $20k range is believable for volume orders - and reportedly the Russians have ordered another 2,400 already.
Why buy something like this from Iran? “It’s cheap” and “it works” are both good answers, but there’s a third reason hinted at by The Eurasian Times, in an article titled Shooting Down A $14,000 Geran-2 UAV With A Million Dollar Missile Cannot Win That War For Ukraine – Experts. (my highlighting below)
Iranian armed forces are known to operate more armed drones than many other nations that have twice their defense budget, and that too under crippling Western sanctions. (The Eurasian Times)
This isn’t a weapon that can be denied to the Russians by simply placing an embargo on critical parts. The Iranians have developed a weapon they can build no matter what pressure is brought to stop them. Expect to see lots and lots of these drones, unless Ukraine (or America) comes up with a cheaper, effective counter measure.
That won’t be easy. NATO air defense systems are designed to counter high tech aircraft and missiles. Those air defense systems are effective, but also very expensive - not surprising given they were designed to shoot down other expensive, advanced weapons. One such system is the IRIS-T, which fires missiles similar to the American Aim-9 Sidewinder.
For example, an average Shahed drone costs around $20,000, while an IRIS-T missile costs about $430,000, which is 20 times more than the cost of the Iranian-made kamikaze drone. (The Eurasian Times)
What happens when the airborne weapon you need to stop is so cheap that your enemy can afford many thousands of them?
A quick aside about weapon system costs
In manufacturing industries (my own specialty) we often talk about the “marginal cost” of a product. This is the cost of building just one more (or one less) of something than you’re currently building. It’s a very useful number, especially in high volume manufacturing, when you want to set pricing and budgets.
The U.S. military doesn’t readily give us enough information about any big-ticket weapon to determine the marginal cost. For this discussion, some cost estimates come from the FY 2023 Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System published by the U.S. Department of Defense.
This document gives total dollar amounts for 2021, 2022 and 2023 as well the quantity purchased for the major weapon systems budgeted. But there are several caveats: some of the funding might be for upgrades to already purchased weapons, or conversely some of the money might be payments for weapons delivered in a different year. Some of the money might just be research or development expenses.
The cost per unit will often vary a lot and as a result we’ll often use a range rather than a single number. Here’s an example, from my favorite program to hate on: the F-35 Joint Wonder Strike Turkey.
The program management office has tossed around numbers below $100 million ($85 million is a common estimate) but not a single plane has been bought at anything close to that price. The program is just a big money funnel with no end in sight.
For some weapons we can occasionally find a specific contract (like the Stinger missile contract listed below) and these can give us a more precise idea of what something costs. Either way, keep in mind these estimates have large error margins.
Stinger vs. Dorito
One of the weapons sent to Ukraine to help counter Russian air superiority is the Stinger missile. This is the primary U.S. MANPADS missile (Man Portable Air Defense System) and 1,400 have already been sent by the U.S., plus more from NATO allies.
But there’s a teensy problem with replacing them in the U.S. stockpile - none have been built in the last ten years. Here’s National Defense telling us about the current state of American weapon stockpiles:
Other weapon systems face even more dire production challenges. The United States has delivered more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, helping prevent Russian domination of contested airspace. Having been focused on counterinsurgency operations over the past 20 years, the Pentagon has not procured Stingers in more than a decade. Raytheon Technologies — the manufacturer of the Stinger — reported earlier this year that several materials used in the production of the Stinger are no longer available. As such, Raytheon will not be able to resume Stinger production until 2023. (National Defense)
How many are left? According to the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the U.S. has already sent a third of its inventory to Ukraine.
The United States has probably given a third of its inventory to Ukraine… However, DOD is thinking about acquiring a follow-on missile rather than replacing the lost inventory with Stingers one-for-one. (CSIS)
Perhaps there’s isn’t a “follow-on” missile option to buy, because Raytheon received a big contract to get that production line restarted and build at least 1,300 Stingers.
TUCSON, Ariz., May 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX) business, was awarded a $624 million U.S. Army contract to produce 1,300 Stinger® missiles. The contract includes provisions for engineering support, as well as the test equipment and support needed to address obsolescence, modernize key components, and accelerate production. (Raytheon press release)
At $624 million you get 1,300 missiles, which means paying $480,000 for each one. So the American missile that could be used to shoot down one of those Iranian built suicide drones costs 24 times as much as the drone it’s targeting. Please don’t miss - if you fire two of these you’ve spent $1 million to stop a single 100 lb. warhead.
Some of that $624 million might be for production line re-tooling that Raytheon expects to amortize over more than just these 1,300 missiles, so the average price may change if another order is placed.
But for now the simple fact is Raytheon is being paid $624 million and they’re delivering 1,300 Stingers. Even if the successful interception rate is 100%, this is a lot of money to shoot down $26 million (1,300 x $20k each, assuming zero misses) worth of drones.
NASAMS vs. Dorito
The two standard American air-to-air missiles are the infrared guided AIM-9x (Sidewinder) and radar guided AMRAAM missiles. The AIM-9x costs somewhere around $500k-$600k each and the AMRAAM is $1.2 - $1.8 million each (this is per the defense budget summary mentioned earlier).
Norway designed a ground launch system for the AMRAAM missile called the NASAMS (Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System), and Ukraine has received two (2) of these systems, delivered by Raytheon in October.
“We did just deliver two NASAMS systems. (...) We delivered two of them to the government a couple of weeks ago. They’re being installed in Ukraine today,” CEO Greg Hayes said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program.
"NASAMS is a short-range air defense system (...) and it could knock down everything in the sky from drones to ballistic missiles to fighter jets,” Hayes said. (The Kyiv Independent)
Each one has six missile canisters and the latest version can fire either radar guided AMRAAM missiles or the (ahem) cheaper infrared guided AIM-9 “Sidewinder” missiles.
Mathematics break: If the Russians launch 12 drones at $20k each that’s $240k worth of drones. Assuming the NASAMS missiles actually track the missiles, and assuming a 100% kill rate, the system will fire either $3 million (AIM-9) or $9 million (AMRAAM) worth of missiles to intercept half the drones - and the target will still be destroyed.
We’re being as generous as possible (100% kill rate) but this is still a double loss for the Ukrainian side. The target will be destroyed, but trying to protect it will also cost millions of dollars and deplete very expensive air defense systems.
Expect the Russians to launch huge numbers of these drones over the next few months. The Ukrainians will be forced to choose between letting the drones through, or using up all their available air defense missiles and leaving themselves open to attack by Russian aircraft.
RAM vs. Dorito
Originally based on the Sidewinder, the U.S. Navy’s point-defense against anti-ship missiles is called the RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile). At about $1.1 million each (current budget) these aren’t any better than the Air Force solutions and would require the development of a ground based system.
If the thing you’re protecting is a multi-billion dollar warship these are a really good choice. But they’re not so attractive if you’re just trying to shoot down a $20k dumb drone. The Iranian designers of the Shahed-136 would laugh every time a RAM was launched to counter a Dorito.
Gepard vs. Dorito
The German military (Bundeswehr) has a different type of solution for air defense against small targets - the Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepard (also called a SPAAG, or Self Propelled Anti Aircraft Gun). This is a tracked armored vehicle mounting a pair of radar guided cannons. The vehicle itself is expensive but at least the ammunition is cheap (compared to a missile).
Hundreds were built but the German military took the last of their Gepards out of service a decade ago. They recently refurbished 50 of them to give to Ukraine but there’s already an issue - not all of them have been delivered yet they’re already running out of ammunition. So factories are getting retooled to make more ammo right now, with deliveries starting next year.
The good news for the Ukrainians is the Germans should have lots of these in storage so they might be able to replace losses. The bad news is the range of the system is the range of the gun - so very short. With 50 spread out over a country almost as large as Texas they can only protect a few critical areas.
And, of course, the gun can only aim one direction at at time so swarm attacks from multiple directions will guarantee some of the drones always get through. We should also assume the Iranians will at some point modify the drone to fly a random, jerky path as it nears the target to make it harder to hit with a big gun.
Comparison: America’s glide bomb
For a little comparison of solutions to delivering ordnance on target cheaply and accurately, let’s look at an American weapon with precision targeting and a warhead weighing about 100 lbs - the SDB 2 (Small Diameter Bomb II).
In the days before precision guided munitions the expected error in impact point for a gravity bomb was very large. The way to compensate for this is with very large bombs (up to 1,000 lbs) or very many of them. But modern precision weapons actually hit the target (most of the time) so the Air Force now has a 250 lb bomb that can be just as effective in many cases, and with a special bomb rack four of these can be placed on the single pylon that previously carried that 1,000 lb bomb.
These new bombs have little wings that pop out so the can glide up to 46 miles to their targets. They can’t be programmed to follow a complex path like a drone but they’ll drop in much faster so they’re probably harder to stop.
According to the Air Force these cost $40,000 each - they have a fancy web page telling us all about it.
Except this is nothing like what’s in the budget. The original model (SDB 1) is being replaced by a “more capable” version (SDB 2) which is also - you guessed it - way more expensive. Like a lot of DoD programs, the price they like to advertise is the price before they added all the features they really wanted. Production of the cheap version is winding down while production of the new hotness is ramping up.
The new SDB costs 20x as much as the Shahed-136 in addition to requiring a big ol’ airplane to drop it. The SDB warhead probably works better than a Shahed-136, but is that extra capability needed for all types of targets? Apparently not, based on reports that indicate the Russians are doing a lot of damage with their little Doritos.
Summary: Let’s run the numbers
The Russian 2023 defense budget is something like $84 billion, maybe a tenth of the U.S. defense budget. But let’s assume they dedicate 0.5% of it to Crazy Iranian Dorito Drones, thereby getting the Fight The Great Satan discount price of $14,000 each. The Russians will then have 30,000 drones to launch into Ukrainian (NATO) air defenses, assuming the Iranians can build that many.
Trying to shoot them down with million dollar missiles would mean spending $30 billion - and would require more air defense missiles than NATO possesses. The reality is that extremely critical targets would be defended (but still mostly get destroyed), while the majority of the drones wouldn’t be countered at all. Any fixed targets that weren’t absolutely critical would be destroyed.
The enemy gets a vote
The Russians have exposed the great weakness of American weapon systems; the American military is, in a sense, very brittle. With the emphasis shifted over the last two decades to counterinsurgency operations, their weapons are really tailored for one of two things:
Small, low intensity wars where the Americans control the battle space and can inflict a lot of damage while limiting their own casualties.
Short, high intensity engagements using small numbers of very high tech weapons against similarly equipped enemies.
But many of their weapons are so expensive and time consuming to build and maintain that the Americans will never have enough of them when confronted by a near-peer adversary.
This is what we’re seeing now with the shortage of standard, unguided 155 mm artillery shells (see Wars Use Lots of Shells). Once its stockpiles are depleted to their minimum reserve level, America can’t support the pace of operations with new production.
One of the common sayings about war is that the enemy also gets a vote in what happens. The Russians, like the Chinese, are powerful enough to wage a war using very large numbers of cheap weapons, while the American equivalents get spread out so thin they’re ineffective.
From what we’ve seen so far, America is in no way prepared for this kind of war.
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Great article.
Some thoughts tho
- in the block where you mention americas glide bomb, you made a typo 40.00 -> 40.000 $)
- SPAAG afaik dont use coventional ammo, but sort of explosive shells that litter the surrounding area in shrapnel. So i think they are even better against swarm attacks ? From a cost-effectiveness point of view, these should (imo) really stand out. Your point "from different directions" obviously is valid.
- In terms of the stinger, Wikipedia (yes i know you dont like it) states unitcost at 120k $ in 2020.
The contract you state is factual, but im wondering is this contract actually for the launch system and missiles 1:1, or is it a just missiles ? They can be reused and obviously you need way more missiles than launchers and that would possibly explain the skew in the unit cost ?
- That said, stinger missiles obviously overkill when trying to destroy drones, both in terms of speed as well as damage potential. I would think ideally you would want something that is like 1/4 of a Stinger. Accurate tracking, less mass, less weight, smaller warhead and then lots of them.
- Since current manpads were basically designed to be able to handle "actual" aircraft like helicopters and possibly jets (remember stingers are from the 60s, where helicopters were a big deal), they are STILL way oversized to handle
I would expect there to be "downsized" manpads (missiles) "soon" (tm), im sure Raytheon and friends is already designing them ?
Im thinking one interesting way to neutralize drones would be another (friendly) drone that is able to emit a jamming signal towards its target. Essentially get a cheap but fast drone that can at least match the targets speed. Get close, then try to jam it (could even use an EMP to make your own suicide drone).
I feel like (just a feeling really) that ground based jamming (gear or installation) is somewhat inefficient due to quadratic loss in energy effiency over distance (not sure i worded that right but i believe you what i refer to?)
Anyways lots of rambling from my end, thanks for this article and the substack in general.
Really enjoy your articles John