After the Islamic Republic of Iran launched so many drones across the region that some slipped through defenses—including a strike that killed six U.S. soldiers at an operations center in Kuwait—the war quickly tested how well the United States can counter low-cost “swarms” of unmanned aircraft. U.S. experts and defense officials have said American forces have been able to shoot down the majority of drones and take out much of Iran’s drone capability, but critics have argued the cost tradeoff has sometimes favored expensive missile interceptors over cheaper targets.
In public remarks this week, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the number of drones Iran has launched has fallen 83% since the conflict began on Feb. 28. Caine also said U.S. forces are striking “military and industrial targets” inside Iran to “deny them the ability to continue to generate those one-way attack drones.”
U.S. officials have also acknowledged that despite interceptor successes, the threat remains difficult to defeat fully. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “thousands of Iranian missiles and drones have been intercepted and vaporized,” but he also conceded, “this does not mean we can stop everything.” Experts cited how Shahed-style drones, which can fly low and slow and buzz like mopeds before hitting targets, can oversaturate defenses and create the conditions for damage even when many drones are destroyed.
Analysts and defense leaders said the Pentagon is now trying to adjust the mix of defenses as it confronts fleets of cheap, one-way drones that Ukraine has shown can be effective in similar warfare. Brett Velicovich, a drone warfare expert who operated Predator drones in the U.S. Army and co-founded the Power.us drone manufacturing company, said U.S. forces are “crushing them,” but argued that one successful strike against an American would be enough to require continued fixing of the problem.
Much of the debate in Washington has centered on what it takes to stop drones at scale. The U.S. and allies have used hundreds—if not thousands—of Patriot missiles for defense against Iranian missiles and drones across the Middle East, but experts say the military is increasingly turning to other options that can be cheaper per engagement, including attack helicopters and machine guns. President Donald Trump suggested that shift as well, saying Monday that the U.S. “now have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones.”
The Pentagon is also moving to bring in counter-drone technology built around the experience of Ukraine. U.S. officials are deploying Merops, an anti-drone system that fits in the back of a pickup truck and uses artificial intelligence to navigate when electronic communications are jammed. The Associated Press previously reported that the system was proven in Ukraine against Russian drones that are similar to the Iranian threat.
The U.S. push for learning from Ukraine comes as Ukrainian leaders seek deeper cooperation with Washington on drone-related expertise and technology. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists on Tuesday that Ukraine proposed a deal with the U.S. last year to provide drone technology, including interceptor drones, and that he did not know whether the proposal was refused or “definitely postponed,” while adding that Ukraine still hopes to sign such an agreement. Experts said the U.S. military has been slow to overhaul its arsenal and tactics for the drone challenge, even as drones became a defining feature of modern battlefields after demonstrations by Russia and other forces.
Several analysts said the lesson from Ukraine is that cheaper weapons can matter when the air threat is dominated by low-cost drones. Brandon Blackburn, a former CIA targeting officer who conducted counterterrorism operations throughout the Middle East, said there “is going to be a learning curve,” and argued that the more Ukrainians can provide “guidance and expertise” the better off forces will be. Ryan Brobst, a scholar focused on U.S. defense strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said U.S. military and allied social media posts have indicated the use of relatively cheaper weapons such as aircraft machine guns or laser-guided rockets, and he pointed to a video posted by the United Arab Emirates military showing an Apache helicopter shooting a Shahed with a machine gun.
Other experts described how Ukraine’s experience is pushing defenses toward the lowest-cost intercept methods possible for low-altitude threats. Northwestern University professor William Reno, who researches Ukraine’s military training for the Pentagon and visits the country regularly, said Ukraine has found ways to shoot down drones using .50-caliber machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks or other fast-moving platforms. Reno said “Ukraine was the wake-up call,” and that the long-run effect will likely be “thinking more seriously about cheap stuff that comes through the air.”
Behind the tactical changes, the Defense Department is also expanding procurement for drone-related systems. Travis Metz, the Pentagon’s drone dominance program manager, told senators last week that the Defense Department committed $1.1 billion to buy drone systems over the next 18 months. Metz said the effort includes 30,000 small, one-way attack drones to be delivered to military units over the next five months, reflecting a broader effort to keep pace with the drone threat.
In the U.S. strategy of countering unmanned aircraft, experts said the focus is also moving beyond the historical emphasis on dominating higher altitudes. For decades, U.S. strategy counted on controlling airspace above conflicts at higher elevations, but Reno said drones are forcing militaries to think about how they defend low-altitude airspace now. Jerry McGinn, a former Defense Department official focused on manufacturing and industrial base policy who is now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. military already has programs centered on inexpensive drones. He specifically cited the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, which he said American forces are using in Iran, noting that the U.S. military said in a post on X that the American-made, one-way attack drones were “modeled after Iran’s Shahed drones.”