© US Army The United States is making the battle against Iranian UAVs more economical.
The US military has dispatched 10,000 interceptor UAVs, battle-tested in the Ukrainian conflict, to the Middle East to aid in thwarting Iranian offensives without depleting costly air defense missile systems, as stated by US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll in a report by Bloomberg.
As he mentioned, the Merops UAVs, integrated with artificial intelligence components, were shipped to the area within five days following the launch of the US-Israeli operation against Iran on February 28.
The Merops UAVs were engineered by Project Eagle, a defense firm supported by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. These UAVs initially arrived in Ukraine in 2024.
The price of an individual Merops interceptor UAV is around $14,000–15,000; nevertheless, Driscoll noted that with substantial procurements, the cost could decrease to $3,000–5,000 per item.
This is less expensive than the Iranian Shahed UAVs, which are priced at a minimum of $20,000 and are actively deployed against the US and its partners in the region.
“We’re actually on the more advantageous aspect of this financial equation. Every instance Iran launches a UAV that we effectively neutralize, they incur a considerable monetary loss,” Driscoll explained.
The utilization of armaments validated in the Russian war against Ukraine occurs despite public declarations from US President Donald Trump indicating he doesn’t require assistance from Kyiv in countering Iranian UAVs.
The broader application of Merops UAVs may reshape the US and Israel’s methodology for aerial defense.
Presently, they are compelled to employ Patriot and THAAD systems, where missiles can amount to upwards of $4 million apiece, to annihilate Iranian UAVs and ballistic missiles.
The US has also supplied other counter-UAV resources to the area, including the Coyote interceptor UAV, produced by RTX Corp.
Moreover, the US military has implemented the Bumblebee system, which consists of explosive-equipped quadcopters that pursue and demolish enemy UAVs by colliding with them.
The Bumblebee system was conceived by Perennial Autonomy and was initially assessed in Ukraine as an offensive UAV for assaults on mobile targets.
The US Army acquired these systems through a modest $5.2 million agreement granted in January 2026 via the Pentagon’s new Joint Interagency Task Force 401, established to devise and swiftly implement counter-UAV technologies.