After $25 billion of spending, 39 days of fighting, and about that much time on ceasefire, the Iran war is currently on pause. For participants willing (the United States, Israel, and Iran) and unwilling alike (the other Gulf nations), it’s now time to pause, take stock, and… restock.
The Gulf nation of Qatar suffered much during the short-lived war. Home to the Al Udeid Air Base, America’s largest military base in the Middle East, Qatar became a prime target for Iranian attacks during the war. Qatar suffered an estimated 700 Iranian drone and missile strikes that damaged liquefied natural gas facilities to such an extent that it may take five years to bring them back online, at a cost of $20 billion in revenue lost annually.
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Image source: BAE Systems. Qatar needs 10,000 rockets
Should the war resume, Qatar wants to be better prepared to defend itself next time — and so it’s turning to the U.S. government and defense contractor BAE Systems (OTC: BAESY) for assistance. According to a recent U.S. State Department notification to Congress, the Qatari government has requested permission to purchase 10,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System-II (APKWS) rockets for $992.4 million.
Originally designed as an air-to-surface missile, fired from platforms such as the Apache attack helicopter at ground targets, the APKWS is basically an unguided 70 mm Hydra rocket equipped with a laser guidance system to improve accuracy. But once this modification was made, militaries discovered something amazing:APKWS can shoot down drones midair. (Indeed, in at least one instance, it’s succeeded in shooting down a cruise missile.)
This fact was proved in practice last year in Ukraine, in a pilot project run by both BAE Systems and its partner, L3Harris (NYSE: LHX), which equipped pickup trucks with L3’s Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE) launcher. Used to defend Ukrainian cities from attacks by Shahed-136 drones, built by Russia on license from Iran, the VAMPIRE-plus-APKWS system proved remarkably effective in shooting down drones.
Even better, it proved remarkably cheap.
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