Journalist Wladimir van Wilgenburg filmed incoming drones over Erbil in Iraq’s Kurdistan region as U.S. defenses shot them down, sending explosions that rattled nearby apartments. He said the Iran-launched UAVs intended to strike U.S. facilities are now a daily hazard and that most are intercepted before reaching their targets.
Those interceptions come at high cost. Iran’s Shahed-136 and related expendable drones are built for roughly $20,000 to $50,000 apiece, while U.S. interceptors such as Patriot and THAAD cost millions each. That cost asymmetry lets Tehran impose outsized expenses on adversaries, says Kelly Grieco of the Stimson Center. U.S. officials have privately warned of dwindling interceptor stocks and possible need to draw from reserves outside the region.
The drone barrage has been relentless during Operation Epic Fury. Early attacks killed six U.S. service members when a drone struck a U.S. operations center in Kuwait. Petroleum facilities in the UAE were targeted, and drones struck U.S. embassies in Riyadh and Iraq. The Pentagon has leaned heavily on high-end missile defenses across the Gulf; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said drone attacks were down about 95% since the fighting began. Analysts caution, however, that fewer launches do not necessarily mean the threat has passed — the decline could reflect damaged Iranian capacity, tactical changes, or temporary pauses.
Drones are transforming modern conflict. At one end of the spectrum are multimillion-dollar systems like the RQ-4 Global Hawk that provide long-range surveillance. At the other are cheap, repurposed quadcopters and propeller-driven attack UAVs such as the Shahed family — expendable munitions that Iran has used against bases and shipping and that others have copied. Russia bought Shahed designs and produced its Geran variants, and the U.S. has developed a low-cost, Shahed-like attacker called LUCAS.
No conflict has accelerated drone innovation like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces adapted off-the-shelf FPV drones to attack tanks and vehicles and then developed inexpensive methods to defeat incoming Shahed-style UAVs: machine guns, jamming, cheap counter-drones, and other ad hoc measures. Ukraine reports kill rates as high as about 90% against some Shahed-type attacks and has offered to share techniques with the U.S.; that offer of “Sting” interceptors was rebuffed by former President Trump, who said the United States did not need the assistance.
Ukraine’s experience also highlights limits. Drones enable asymmetric strikes and steady attrition, but they have not produced decisive breakthroughs; instead they have contributed to a grinding stalemate. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia launched more than 57,000 Shahed and similar drones at Ukrainian cities over four years, and Ukraine has expended thousands in return.
Recently, Gulf states have faced waves of low-cost Iranian UAVs that U.S. systems are working to intercept. The UAE reported engaging 304 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,627 UAVs since hostilities escalated. High-altitude missile defenses and aircraft help, but Shaheds fly low and can appear late on radar, giving defenders little time. “They’re not necessarily that hard to kill once you see them,” says Thomas Karako of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “but they’re hard to see.”
Experts say warnings were available. U.S. planners monitored Ukraine’s drone adaptations and discussed low-cost aerial threats, yet many Gulf bases lacked layered, low-cost point defenses capable of stopping small, low-flying UAVs that slip past long-range systems. Dara Massicot of the Carnegie Endowment says the U.S. is now racing to field layered defenses in real time: combining interceptors and aircraft with simpler, ground-based point defenses such as .50-caliber guns, short-range systems, jamming, and counter-UAVs to catch the “leakers.”
The economics are stark: Iran can afford to expend large numbers of cheap drones and force opponents to use costly interceptors until stocks run low. That dynamic has raised concern that the U.S. could exhaust interceptors before drone supplies are depleted.
Drones have also proliferated to nonstate actors and across fragmented conflicts. They were used in the fight to retake Mosul, in Sudan’s civil war, and extensively by Israeli forces in Gaza, where civilians compare the constant aerial hum to a persistent background noise. Iranian-made systems have been used against rebels and civilians in multiple theaters, raising casualties and damaging infrastructure.
The spread of inexpensive, expendable aerial systems marks a new chapter in air power and air defense. Smaller militaries and insurgents can now project strike and surveillance capabilities that once required large air forces. The changing battlefield calls for layered defenses, rapid adaptation, and low-cost countermeasures. Analysts urge prioritizing multi-layered defenses that include simple point systems to stop low-altitude threats, managing interceptor inventories with swarm economics in mind, and embedding lessons from Ukraine and other conflicts into doctrine and procurement rather than waiting for crises. As James Patton Rogers of Cornell’s Brooks Tech Policy Institute notes, a kind of “bunkerization” is taking hold as civilians shelter from drone attacks — a reminder that cheap aerial weapons reshape both military strategy and everyday life in contested regions.