The U.S. response to countering Iran’s Shahed drones has been “disappointing,” the other U.S. official said, particularly because the drones fired by Iran are a much more basic version of the same drone that Russia is continuously refining and updating in its war in Ukraine.
Drones are hard to pinpoint on radar systems calibrated for spotting high-speed missiles and can be mistaken for birds or planes. The Merops system is designed to spot them and take them down. Crucially, the system also is cheaper than firing a missile that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars at a drone that costs less than $50,000.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said this week that “we’re pretty good at taking missiles down. What is much more problematic for us is the huge inventory of Iranian drones, which are hard to detect and hard to take down.”
Himes said the drone attacks present a “math problem” in that the U.S. cannot keep relying on expensive military interceptors, like Patriot systems, to down the quickly and cheaply made Iranian drones.
“It’s really, really expensive to take down a cheap drone,” he said. “A giant missile going after a tiny little crappy drone.”
Perennial Autonomy did not immediately respond to questions about the use of Merops in the Middle East.
Pentagon officials conceded this week in closed-door briefings with lawmakers they are struggling to stop waves of drones launched by Iran, leaving some U.S. targets in the Gulf region vulnerable.
“This does not mean we can stop everything, but we ensured that the maximum possible defense and maximum possible force protection was set up before we went on offense,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters this week.
Michael Robbins, president and CEO of AUVSI, a drone industry group, said lessons from the Middle East and Ukraine show that the U.S. must accelerate deployment of sophisticated counter-drone technologies, so “our forces can defend bases and populations without spending a million dollars to stop a $50,000 threat.”
