The Pentagon is testing a new generation of defense systems aimed at narrowing the gap between the cost of an attacking drone and the cost of shooting it down.
The wars in Iran and Ukraine have underscored a growing problem for modern militaries: relatively cheap drones can be launched in large waves, forcing defenders to expend weapons that can cost millions of dollars apiece.
At testing and training facilities across the United States, the military is working with startups and traditional defense contractors to develop interceptor drones, electronic warfare systems and artificial-intelligence-powered software. The aim is to build a layered defense that can be deployed without rapidly depleting stocks of sophisticated interceptor missiles.
“The real problem is the cost imbalance. We are seeing quite clearly how these waves of cheap drones and munitions can impose great costs when employed en masse,” Lauren Kahn, a former Pentagon policy adviser and now a senior research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told MBN.
“Defensive and counter-drone technology hasn’t kept pace, cost-wise, with how cheap offensive capabilities have become. So states now face a hard calculation every time a drone comes in — is it actually worth spending an expensive interceptor to shoot it down?” she added.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that some Iranian Shahed drones cost roughly $20,000 to $50,000, while modern air-defense missiles can cost millions of dollars, as is the case with some interceptors used by the U.S.-built Patriot system.
In recent months, the Pentagon has stepped up investment in counter-drone technology, awarding millions of dollars in contracts to private companies and expanding testing at military facilities.
The Interagency Joint Task Force 401, a specialized counter-drone unit established in August 2025, is leading much of the effort.
Lt. Col. Adam Scher, a spokesman for the task force, told MBN in an email that the unit “is cutting through red tape and consolidating resources by engaging venture capitalists, tech startups, and nontraditional defense firms as critical industry partners to quickly deliver effective C-UAS equipment to warfighters, law enforcement, and security personnel.”
The task force relies on field trials and demonstrations to assess the performance of emerging technologies under conditions that resemble a battlefield.
Lt. Col. Scher said that “a variety of demonstrations, testing, and evaluation events” allow the task force “to quickly acquire promising new technology with high-performing capabilities and to deliver state-of-the-art c-UAS equipment into the hands of warfighters for operational use and feedback.”
The approach differs from the traditional weapons procurement cycle, which can take years of testing before deployment.
In January, the task force signed a $5.2 million agreement with Perennial Autonomy to provide its Bumblebee V2 system.
The system is a small drone designed to intercept other drones by colliding with them. The task force said deliveries began in March and that U.S. forces conducted the system’s first operational test in April with soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division.
But U.S. officials do not expect any single technology to solve the problem. Countering drone attacks, according to the Pentagon, will require integrating sensors, radars, electronic warfare, kinetic interceptors and software into a single network.
“We believe in creating a layered defense so the right tool can be used in the right circumstances, and the right approach can be tailored to each scenario,” Scher said.
In August, the task force launched what it described as a “counter-unmanned aircraft systems marketplace,” an online platform that allows military and government users to review systems that have undergone testing, compare their performance and order them through existing contracts.
The U.S. Army also announced last week that it was opening several of its test ranges to private companies to aid their efforts to develop new, less expensive missiles, drones and other weapons.
U.S. officials expect artificial intelligence will play a big role by making interceptor drones more autonomous and capable of operating in swarms without requiring large numbers of human operators.
Palladyne AI announced last week that it had successfully completed a field test with the Army using its operating system and Gremlin-X small drones, which can be reused if they miss their targets.
Heath Meyer, a spokesman for the company, said its “SwarmOS [operation system] helped deliver multi-drone, multi-vendor autonomous operations under demanding, operationally realistic battlefield conditions.”
He told MBN that the platform allows a single operator to control a group of drones that coordinate their movements and organize themselves to carry out a mission without continuous human input.
Meyer did not say when the technology might be used in combat, but said the system had demonstrated its capabilities in live flight tests involving different platforms.
The urgency is growing as concerns mount over a possible resumption of fighting in the Middle East amid continued tensions between the United States and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz.
An analysis published last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that the conflict with Iran had further depleted U.S. stocks of advanced interceptors, including Patriot and THAAD missiles.
The analysis said shortages could force the United States and its Middle Eastern allies to accept greater levels of risk in order to preserve air-defense missiles for the most serious threats.
Lowering the cost of interception would not, by itself, solve the problem, according to Georgetown’s Kahn. Even if the United States succeeds in developing cheaper systems, “the real question is whether the U.S. can build the industrial capacity to produce interceptors at that speed and scale” to match the mass production of drones.
Lt. Col. Scher did not answer questions about when current technologies could move from testing to deployment, or how the Pentagon plans to address the cost of countering drones at scale. “There is no silver bullet to countering drones and there is not a one-size-fits-all package for every base or piece of critical infrastructure,” he said.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
