As part of Operation Shader, against IS.
Not much on what sort of drone so far, it is only a drone granted, who was operating it, whether it's intentions were for recce or as a weapon too, are the more pertinent ones perhaps.
But first real world Typhoon air to air.

https://www.forces.net/news/first-air-a ... -out-syria

bikerthai wrote:

It is a dilemma, but until there is an effective system developed, you'll just have to eat the cost. Similar to how Israel use their expensive Iron dome to shoot down cheap rockets
bt

Or similar to how western air forces use precision guided bombs and missiles worth $200,000 to punch holes in tents worth $3. It's how asymmetric warfare works.

art wrote:

GDB wrote:

As part of Operation Shader, against IS.
Not much on what sort of drone so far, it is only a drone granted, who was operating it, whether it's intentions were for recce or as a weapon too, are the more pertinent ones perhaps.
But first real world Typhoon air to air.

https://www.forces.net/news/first-air-a ... -out-syria

What does a drone cost? What does an A2A missile cost? Sending drones in is a good way to drain your adversary's budget. Isn't there a more cost effective way of downing drones? An anti-drone drone comes to mind for short range defence against drones.

I would guess that the recent history of drones, cheap as you say, at least ones from non state actors, have already demonstrated they have a disruption, sometimes lethal effect, out of all proportion to their cost.
In any case, without such dedicated ways of countering them, at least in operation - no shortage of R & D on this subject including in the UK - as is usually the case in any conflict, you use what you have. In this case a Typhoon already available almost certainly for their usual mission on Shader as on demand support against IS.

I know expensive missiles against often single high value targets, such as identfied terrorists, is at first sight disproportionate with a real risk of collateral damage.
It is also true that the two longest range confirmed sniper kills have been against these HVT’s, the longest by a Canadian sniper, the second British, however to get the sniper in the area, covertly presumably, requires SF support, their usually rotary wing transport, overwatch with airborne surveillance and ELINT assets most likey, maybe more conventional ground and air forces if a rapid and violent extraction is required in a worst case.
The point I’m making is that even the much less costly and proportionate action at first glance, isn’t quite that.

Back to this incident, we will have to see if the MoD releases more info on what sort of drone it was, it would have been visually I’d before engagement, when the pilot assesed the most appropriate weapon system, perhaps based how urgent it’s destruction was.

I'd have a quiet chuckle to myself if it turned out to be a Russian drone.

bikerthai wrote:

art wrote:

What does a drone cost? What does an A2A missile cost? Sending drones in is a good way to drain your adversary's budget. Isn't there a more cost effective way of downing drones?

I started to dig in to this but found no easy answer.

What is the price placed a coalition soldier killed if the drone happened to be ladden with explosive?

You would wonder if they could have done a gun pass, but maybe they either did not have enough time or concerned that secondary explosion would take down the aircraft.

It is a dilemma, but until there is an effective system developed, you'll just have to eat the cost. Similar to how Israel use their expensive Iron dome to shoot down cheap rockets

bt

And there's half of the equation. The other thing is the missile's cost is also already mostly spent, they have shelf-lives, and must be reworked or scrapped after a certain amount of flights when not fired, so there is an added cost to keeping them around.

Truth be told, firing the missile is the cheapest option.

The quoted price of a ASRAAM round is reportedly £200,000.

Right, the missile on wing rests atop a huge pyramid of money that was all invested in getting that shoot-down capability to that location. The missile itself might be $200k but represents like a $200m investment in getting it there.

ssteve wrote:

Right, the missile on wing rests atop a huge pyramid of money that was all invested in getting that shoot-down capability to that location. The missile itself might be $200k but represents like a $200m investment in getting it there.

....while doing a tasking the type has been undertaking for several years. It wasn't sent there to go after the odd drone.

More on the apparent intended target, which backs bikerthai's point it seems;
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle ... 03412.html

It's actually good to know a fighter jet can track such a small drone and that an asraam is able to engage it. But it only takes a few more drones to exhaust the asraam loadout of a pair of Typhoons or even their entire missiles compliment.

tomcat wrote:

It's actually good to know a fighter jet can track such a small drone and that an asraam is able to engage it. But it only takes a few more drones to exhaust the asraam loadout of a pair of Typhoons or even their entire missiles compliment.

They do have cannon, many think otherwise as for a time in the 2000’s it was planned to delete it, however some Operation Shader stats released a couple of years ago, for Typhoon’s use of munitions, included not only Paveway IV, Brimstone and also occasional use of the 27mm cannon.

The cost of missile argument is kind of strange. Just having a Typhoon patrol the airspace costs insane amount of money per hour. And the support structure and staff even more. The cost of the missile itself is peanuts in the big scope of things. Especially when you consider the fact that it has limited shelf life. You could also argue that it's better to spend a missile in a "real" theatre of war on a genuine target than during a training exercise on a dummy target.

GDB wrote:

tomcat wrote:

It's actually good to know a fighter jet can track such a small drone and that an asraam is able to engage it. But it only takes a few more drones to exhaust the asraam loadout of a pair of Typhoons or even their entire missiles compliment.

They do have cannon, many think otherwise as for a time in the 2000’s it was planned to delete it, however some Operation Shader stats released a couple of years ago, for Typhoon’s use of munitions, included not only Paveway IV, Brimstone and also occasional use of the 27mm cannon.

Real question here: is it that easy to hit a small slow flying drone with the cannon? What's the precision of a cannon shot?

Plus someone else mentioned above the potential risks involved with using the cannon for shooting down a drone loaded with explosive (although the risks with shooting with the cannon at a fighter jet loaded with fuel, missiles and bombs must be similar though). I guess the potential risk would be to get too close from the drone due to its low speed.

Wouldn't a close fly-by at high speed by a Typhoon be enough to take a drone out at little cost? I saw an F-14 take out another F-14 by flying in front of it at close range in a movie once.

canyonblue17 wrote:

Wouldn't a close fly-by at high speed by a Typhoon be enough to take a drone out at little cost? I saw an F-14 take out another F-14 by flying in front of it at close range in a movie once.

Yeah but that topless volleyball documentary had some fairly outdated tactics especially WRT MiG-28s.

When it comes down to risks between using a missile and using your airplane as a missile, I think we see the clear least worst choice in play here.

Spacepope wrote:

canyonblue17 wrote:

Wouldn't a close fly-by at high speed by a Typhoon be enough to take a drone out at little cost? I saw an F-14 take out another F-14 by flying in front of it at close range in a movie once.

Yeah but that topless volleyball documentary had some fairly outdated tactics especially WRT MiG-28s.

When it comes down to risks between using a missile and using your airplane as a missile, I think we see the clear least worst choice in play here.

Folks are already complaining about the cost of the missile, imagine if he'd ingested the drone down his intake and lost the aircraft...

SeamanBeaumont wrote:

Spacepope wrote:

canyonblue17 wrote:

Wouldn't a close fly-by at high speed by a Typhoon be enough to take a drone out at little cost? I saw an F-14 take out another F-14 by flying in front of it at close range in a movie once.

Yeah but that topless volleyball documentary had some fairly outdated tactics especially WRT MiG-28s.

When it comes down to risks between using a missile and using your airplane as a missile, I think kwe see the clear least worst choice in play here.

Folks are already complaining about the cost of the missile, imagine if he'd ingested the drone down his intake and lost the aircraft...

Even just trashing the engine would be way more expensive.

Fire it, don’t fire it. It makes little difference cost wise, it’s not like the missile can be returned for a refund later.

Weren't the French and British running out of some ordnance back when they intervened in Libya? It might not be the cost but the number in inventory that's important.

johns624 wrote:

Weren't the French and British running out of some ordnance back when they intervened in Libya? It might not be the cost but the number in inventory that's important.

Partly by design. The French used it as an opportunity to expend all its HOT stocks.

johns624 wrote:

Weren't the French and British running out of some ordnance back when they intervened in Libya? It might not be the cost but the number in inventory that's important.

No, some smaller NATO AF’s ran low on certain munitions, not the RAF or the French, either AF or navy, though some older ones like the as mentioned, their Army Aviation HOT’s ring true.
For the smaller AF’s, which IIRC included Norway and maybe the Netherlands, running low on munitions is easily fixed, by being in NATO, it possible the larger ones might do too, though worth pointing out in 2011 the RAF had been in constant operations since the first Gulf War, after the end of that they with the US monitored Iraq with regular use of ARMs and PGM’s, then the Balkans in 1995 and 1999, after 2001......
France was just about as busy in the same timeframe.

GDB wrote:

johns624 wrote:

Weren't the French and British running out of some ordnance back when they intervened in Libya? It might not be the cost but the number in inventory that's important.

No, some smaller NATO AF’s ran low on certain munitions, not the RAF or the French, either AF or navy, though some older ones like the as mentioned, their Army Aviation HOT’s ring true.
For the smaller AF’s, which IIRC included Norway and maybe the Netherlands, running low on munitions is easily fixed, by being in NATO, it possible the larger ones might do too, though worth pointing out in 2011 the RAF had been in constant operations since the first Gulf War, after the end of that they with the US monitored Iraq with regular use of ARMs and PGM’s, then the Balkans in 1995 and 1999, after 2001......
France was just about as busy in the same timeframe.

Norwegian and Danish F-16s flew a large amount of the sorties due to less restrictive rules of engagement.
Norway alone flew 2820 sorties over Libya and dropped 588 bombs. Denmark's numbers were very similar, if not slightly higher.
The Danes were starting to run out of munitions after dropping 487 bombs and got resupplied by the Dutch.

delete

What if it were a near-peer opponent?

JetBuddy wrote:

GDB wrote:

johns624 wrote:

Weren't the French and British running out of some ordnance back when they intervened in Libya? It might not be the cost but the number in inventory that's important.

No, some smaller NATO AF’s ran low on certain munitions, not the RAF or the French, either AF or navy, though some older ones like the as mentioned, their Army Aviation HOT’s ring true.
For the smaller AF’s, which IIRC included Norway and maybe the Netherlands, running low on munitions is easily fixed, by being in NATO, it possible the larger ones might do too, though worth pointing out in 2011 the RAF had been in constant operations since the first Gulf War, after the end of that they with the US monitored Iraq with regular use of ARMs and PGM’s, then the Balkans in 1995 and 1999, after 2001......
France was just about as busy in the same timeframe.

Norwegian and Danish F-16s flew a large amount of the sorties due to less restrictive rules of engagement.
Norway alone flew 2820 sorties over Libya and dropped 588 bombs. Denmark's numbers were very similar, if not slightly higher.
The Danes were starting to run out of munitions after dropping 487 bombs and got resupplied by the Dutch.

Sounds more like how I recall it.

To the question of what if a near peer or full peer opponent? What difference would it make, still a potentially dangerous drone was headed for a US SF base.
The Typhoon was a NATO asset if this opponent wants to get pissy, as stated the RAF, closely followed by France, has been active for many years in this region.
Much commentary on this news about how this was the first UK forces shootdown since 1982, that opponent was near peer, if you add their logistics, distance and numbers advantage they were peer. The then US Secretary Of The Navy thought the RN would lose, as did the USSR.
Four decades is a long time, same distance as that conflict to the depths of WW2, still no other NATO member has gone against a peer opponent or near to that.

Not that any of this would have been on the mind of the RAF pilot nor any of the command structure they may have been communicating with.

My point was that if some of the NATO air forces were running short of munitions during this limited engagement, if the balloon ever went up, they'd be in real trouble.

bikerthai wrote:

GDB wrote:

The then US Secretary Of The Navy thought the RN would lose, as did the USSR.

Wot? Even I did not believe the Argentinian had a chance. The only question I had was the casualty rate.

bt

Aside from the large advantage in aircraft numbers, they had weeks to prepare, the UK forces supply line was long and potentially vunerable, over the previous 15 years the UK forces had gone from an East Of Suez and NATO posture, with the costs and strain of doing both increasing, to a NATO one, with some residual ‘out of area’ ability from the NATO flanks commitment. The RN were heavily ASW orientated. Which as it turned out meant the RN were not short of SSN’s, for this operation and NATO, one of which put the enemy navy out of the conflict and probably impacted on sealift for them too.

Which brings us to the issue of munitions, in the ‘82 war it is just as well that they surrendered when they did, as ammo was getting very low despite the massive logistics operation, it was the sheer distance and illustrates that by no means all of the enemy ran or surrendered, it was the basics for the troops not expensive munitions running low.

To come back to now, I think since 2014 Putin’s actions have created, perhaps forced even, a step change in NATO’s thinking. The commitment to have a 2% minimum defence spend in 2015, now some may deride it, say some are fudging it, even so the trend is upwards and some of that inevitably will be in munitions. NATO have joint AWACS, a transport/tanker unit, maybe one for munitions stocks, jointly funded too.
Using chemical weapons on the streets of a NATO member too. Here allow a caveat, I go easy on the European NATO members often cited as not doing enough, since the UK isn’t much better, the current bunch are total bullshitters on this as with everything else. After the 2018 attack on our soil yes they responded, but for context look up ‘Operation Foot’ for a more approriate response.

Though in reality, back to munitions stocks, as we have seen, NATO members help each other in this way. Going back to that unexpected conflict, those 103 AIM-9L’s were from NATO stocks, in the form of the USN in Europe, RAF Germany then being some months away from being the first UK recipient.

art wrote:

GDB wrote:

What does a drone cost? What does an A2A missile cost? Sending drones in is a good way to drain your adversary's budget. Isn't there a more cost effective way of downing drones? An anti-drone drone comes to mind for short range defence against drones.

These weapons all have a shelve life. If they didn't use it to shoot down the drone, at some point it would have been used for training. Two birds with one stone.

fsnuffer wrote:

art wrote:

GDB wrote:

What does a drone cost? What does an A2A missile cost? Sending drones in is a good way to drain your adversary's budget. Isn't there a more cost effective way of downing drones? An anti-drone drone comes to mind for short range defence against drones.

These weapons all have a shelve life. If they didn't use it to shoot down the drone, at some point it would have been used for training. Two birds with one stone.

Indeed. Plus there is an upgrade round coming;
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/asraam- ... n-by-2024/