Nice Superweapon. Too Bad You Can't Afford to Fire It.

Talk about taking a bazooka to kill a fly: A U.S. general reported last week that an unnamed ally used a $3.4 million Patriot missile to shoot down a hostile $200 commercial drone. General David Perkins's point wasn't that this was a technically remarkable feat -- although it certainly was given the tiny target -- but to point out yet another asymmetric advantage global terrorists' hold: it costs the West an unconscionable amount of money to combat even the most basic ad-hoc threats.

For the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon stocked up on $500,000 ambush-resistant vehicles and $150,000 bomb-disposal robots for protection against improvised explosives put together for a few hundred dollars. Unmanned aircraft have proved one the most effective tools in fighting jihadis, but consider the cost of a single strike: a Reaper drone made by General Atomics has a sticker price of $17 million, costs at least $2,500 an hour to fly, and fires a $100,000 Hellfire Romeo missile made by Lockheed Martin Corp.