As the United States and its Middle Eastern allies face Tehran’s response to President Donald Trump’s renewed bombing of Iran, they must find a solution to a growing problem: drones.
Cheap and easy to manufacture, Iran’s Shahed drones are unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used to cover air defenses in conjunction with other missiles. They have been used to successfully attack the US embassy, a radar system, an airport and top videos on social media. Experts say the problem is long-term abstinence.
“The threat of a one-way UAV attack continues,” said Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a briefing on Monday. “Our systems have proven to be effective in calculating these fields, engaging targets quickly.”
The US did not release data on the number of weapons it faced and fired on the ground. Information from the Ministry of Defense of the United Arab Emirates shows that Iran has launched hundreds of Shahed aircraft in the Gulf state, a little more than 90% of which have been captured.
Those restrictions came at a high price. The US and its allies often use aircraft or the Patriot air defense system to protect against bombing, but while the price of one Shahed is estimated at $30,000 to $50,000, a single bomber can cost 10 times that or more while depleting already dwindling stocks.
“If this goes on for a long time, they’re probably going to have to find sustainable ways to do this,” said Kelly Grieco, an executive at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.
Grieco calculated that for every $1 Iran spends producing the Shahed jet, it costs the UAE about $20 to $28 to cut it, according to available data.
“A war like this is what Iran is building for,” said Kyle Glen, a researcher at the London-based nonprofit Center for Information Technology.
The US and Israel have unleashed a barrage of fire on Iran since the military operation began on Friday night, targeting its naval bases and missile depots to limit its retaliatory capabilities. Iran retaliated by launching hundreds of drones and missiles at US bases, airports and energy infrastructure, apparently in an effort to impose political and economic costs on the US and its allies.
Iran has always relied on countering a superior military force, Glen said. That pushed it to explore asymmetric warfare, where smaller or less technologically advanced forces seek ways to overwhelm or eliminate the enemy.
Drones are a good example. The Shahed can be made cheaply out of double-use materials and launched on the back of a truck. Unlike missiles, which require a large infrastructure, drones can be assembled stealthily.
Russia saw the benefits of Shahed drones early. In November 2022, it bought technology and 6,000 units for $1.75 billion from Iran, according to a report by C4ADS, an international security organization based in Washington.
“Russia has made more progress in these weapons than Iran in recent years,” Glen said.
The Russians have launched 57,000 such drones on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure so far, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video conference on Saturday. Their popularity has become so ubiquitous in Ukrainian skies that they have come to be known as “mopeds.”
Ukraine has developed a multi-pronged system that includes mobile teams, interceptor drones and other missiles to defend against that type of weapon, which Russia has continued to develop.
“Because the Shahed passed its baptism of fire in Ukraine, it was able to improve it a lot, modernize it, install additional communication channels, protection against electronic warfare systems – that is, to test this weapon in battle,” said Col. Yuri Ihnat, spokesman for the Ukrainian army.
Despite the unique experience of Ukraine, our partners have never asked for direct help to count the Shahds, Zelenskyy said in a voice memo in response to the journalist’s questions.
“Regarding those who work with airplanes and aircraft, we have employees with extensive experience,” he said. “We are ready to share this information.”
The use of expensive and difficult-to-implement methods to bring down an inferior weapon points to a clear failure of the US to learn lessons from Ukraine, said George Barros, a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War think tank.
“None of these things are new ideas,” Barros said.
It puts the US in a vulnerable position as the number of world conflicts increases and allies complain about Patriot interceptors, of which the US produces about 600 a year, Barros said.
The Stimson Center’s Grieco said: “For 30 years, the United States and other Western air forces have easily gained air superiority – if not air power – over enemy battlefields and therefore neglected to invest in air and missile defense capabilities. And what we’ve found is that it’s really hard to scale this product up.”
US adversaries, on the other hand, are ramping up their drone production. Even if most drones and missiles are intercepted, those that penetrate defenses can cause lethal damage. The Iranians would choose to enter a civil war, as the Russians did, firing their cheap weapons for as long as possible while watching the US defensive peaks come down.
Other countries will take notice. Last year, Ukrainian intelligence warned that North Korea might have received Shahed drone technology from Russia. Iran has also supplied the weapon to the Houthis in Yemen and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, according to the Open Source Munitions Portal, a weapons tracking project. Seeing their effectiveness, other spending methods may be encouraged to develop their own versions.
“Everything indicates that this is a major threat to the world, to the West, to stability,” said Omar Al-Ghusbi, C4ADS analyst and co-author of the Shahed report. “I don’t see it going away any time soon.”
