{"id":648912,"date":"2026-03-11T21:58:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T21:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/648912\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T21:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T21:58:17","slug":"iran-war-tests-us-ability-to-combat-cheap-attack-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/648912\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran war tests US ability to combat cheap attack drones"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Iran war<\/a> quickly tested America\u2019s ability to combat the swarms of cheap drones that have become a staple of the modern battlefield<\/a> after Ukraine and Russia demonstrated how effective they could be. <\/p>\n

The Islamic Republic launched so many drones across the region at once that some slipped through the defenses, including a strike that killed six U.S. soldiers<\/a> at an operations center in Kuwait. <\/p>\n

Experts and defense leaders stress that the U.S. military has been able to shoot down the majority of Iran\u2019s drones and take out much of its drone capabilities. But critics said too often missiles that cost millions of dollars were used to down small drones that cost tens of thousands.<\/p>\n

The U.S. is bringing an anti-drone system to the Middle East that has been tested in Ukraine, which had proposed a deal with the U.S. last year to offer its drone expertise<\/a>. Such an agreement is yet to be made, and American forces are facing a steep learning curve as they scramble to deploy more cost-efficient defenses against Iran\u2019s Shahed drones<\/a>, which fly low and buzz like mopeds before smashing into their targets. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are crushing them \u2014 there\u2019s no doubt about it \u2014 but if even one drone gets through our defenses and hurts an American, for me, that is enough to warrant fixing the problem,\u201d said drone warfare expert Brett Velicovich, who operated Predator drones in the U.S. Army and co-founded the Power.us drone manufacturing company.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what to know about Iran\u2019s drones and efforts by the U.S. to shoot them down:<\/p>\n

US says it\u2019s attacking the source of Iran\u2019s drones<\/p>\n

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that the number of drones launched by Iran had fallen 83% since the war began on Feb. 28. Iran launched more than 2,000 drones in the days after the initial U.S. and Israeli attacks, other top military officials said.<\/p>\n

Caine told reporters that U.S. forces were striking military and industrial targets in Iran \u201cto deny them the ability to continue to generate those one-way attack drones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hundreds \u2014 if not thousands \u2014 of Patriot missiles have been used by the U.S. and its allies across the Middle East to defend against Iranian missiles and drones. But now the U.S. seems to be relying more on attack helicopters and machine guns as a more cost-effective way to shoot down Iranian drones, experts say, and President Donald Trump suggested as much.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones,\u201d the Republican president said Monday.<\/p>\n

The military also is bringing in an American anti-drone system proven to work<\/a> in Ukraine against Russian drones, which are similar to Iran\u2019s, The Associated Press has reported. Known as Merops, the system flies drones against drones, fits in the back of a pickup truck and uses artificial intelligence to navigate when electronic communications are jammed.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists on Tuesday that his country proposed a deal with the U.S. last year to provide cutting-edge and battle-tested drone technology<\/a>, including interceptor drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not know whether they refused it. I\u2019m not sure, but it was definitely postponed,\u201d Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine still hopes to sign such a deal.<\/p>\n

Experts say the U.S. military has been slow to overhaul its arsenal and tactics to respond to the new threat from fleets of drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to be a big wake-up call for how the U.S. military defends its citizens and fights wars forever,\u201d Velicovich said. \u201cBecause it\u2019s sort of like we\u2019re the best military on the planet, but stuff\u2019s still getting by us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Travis Metz, the Pentagon\u2019s drone dominance program manager, told senators last week that the Defense Department has committed $1.1 billion to buy drone systems over the next 18 months, including 30,000 small, one-way attack drones to be delivered to military units over the next five months.<\/p>\n

US is leaning on knowledge from Ukraine <\/p>\n

Pentagon officials have conceded in classified briefings to Congress that they initially struggled to stop the waves of Iranian drones, leaving U.S. service members and Persian Gulf allies vulnerable. High-profile targets like a Dubai skyscraper and airports across the region have been struck.<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that \u201cthousands of Iranian missiles and drones have been intercepted and vaporized.\u201d But he conceded, \u201cthis does not mean we can stop everything.\u201d <\/p>\n

Available in big numbers, the Shahed drones have shown their capability to oversaturate air defenses and inflict painful damage. And while the Shahed flies slowly at 180 kph (just over 110 mph), it can range as far as 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) and carry a relatively big load of 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of explosives. <\/p>\n

The U.S. military has typically operated complicated reusable drones that fire off missiles and return to base, such as the Predator. But Ukraine has shown that relying on large numbers of cheap drones, which carry their payloads directly into the target and become warheads themselves, can be extremely effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is going to be a learning curve, but the more that the Ukrainians can provide us in terms of guidance and expertise I think the better off we all are,\u201d said Brandon Blackburn, who is a former CIA targeting officer who conducted counterterrorism operations throughout the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Ryan Brobst, a scholar focused on U.S. defense strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank, said social media posts by the U.S. military and allies have indicated the use of relatively cheaper weapons like aircraft machine guns or laser-guided rockets to destroy drones in Iran.<\/p>\n

He cited, for example, a video posted by the United Arab Emirates military, which showed an Apache helicopter shooting a Shahed with a large machine gun. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has made significant strides in counter-UAS warfare over the past few years,\u201d Brobst said, referring to unmanned aerial systems. \u201cBut it\u2019s also true that we can still learn more from Ukraine.\u201d <\/p>\n

Looking ahead to focusing on the \u2018cheap stuff\u2019<\/p>\n

Northwestern University professor William Reno, who researches Ukraine\u2019s military training for the Pentagon and visits the country regularly, noted that Ukraine has found cheap ways to shoot down drones with .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the back of a pickup or other fast-moving drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe long-run effect will probably be that it\u2019s going to focus minds wonderfully on thinking more seriously about cheap stuff that comes through the air,\u201d Reno said. <\/p>\n

For decades, U.S. military strategy has counted on dominating the airspace above any conflict it got involved in, but the focus was primarily at higher altitudes where fighters and bombers fly. Now drones will force the military to think about what it does to control low-altitude airspace.<\/p>\n

\u201cUkraine was the wake-up call,\u201d Reno said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. military already has some programs centered on inexpensive drones, according to Jerry McGinn, a former Defense Department official who was focused on manufacturing and industrial base policy and is now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n

One of those programs is the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, which American forces are using in Iran. The U.S. military said in a post on X that the American-made, one-way attack drones were \u201cmodeled after Iran\u2019s Shahed drones.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not public on how effective they\u2019ve been or how they were used,\u201d McGinn said. \u201cBut there\u2019s very much a focus in the U.S. of learning from the experience in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writer Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Iran war quickly tested America\u2019s ability to combat the swarms of cheap drones that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":648913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[275703,275707,170927,69,56270,5755,57,83,3461,6087,275704,32301,8132,13342,50,6986,275705,158,275706,25731,273,3660,67,370,3656,96,93,103,107],"class_list":["post-648912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-brandon-blackburn","tag-brett-velicovich","tag-dan-caine","tag-donald-trump","tag-drone-surveillance-and-warfare","tag-drones","tag-general-news","tag-iran","tag-iran-government","tag-iran-war","tag-jerry-mcginn","tag-kuwait","tag-military-and-defense","tag-military-technology","tag-news","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-ryan-brobst","tag-technology","tag-travis-metz","tag-u-s-department-of-defense","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-government","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-washington-news","tag-world","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116212787410822802","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}