Cheap drones are reshaping the war in the sky
How the US is fighting a war without sending ground troops to Iran — and the inexpensive drones making it harder
For decades, air superiority was largely the preserve of wealthy nations able to afford advanced aircraft and the training needed to fly them. Cheap attack drones are beginning to erode that advantage, giving smaller and less wealthy forces a greater ability to inflict damage.
The United States, by contrast, has long relied on its vast military budget to field some of the world's most expensive aircraft. Below are some of the assets the US military says it has deployed as part of "Operation Epic Fury" in Iran.
High above the clouds, the US has sent out around 200 fighter jets on strike missions. For the first time, the F-35 is seeing extensive use in combat by US forces after cost issues and delays.
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The B-2 bombers are long-range, stealth aircraft capable of carrying up to 40,000 pounds of precision-guided bombs.
Some of the larger aircraft are for refueling or surveillance. Another large aircraft is the B-1 bomber, nicknamed 'Bone', which can carry up to 75,000 pounds of mixed ordnance mission equipment, and hold up to 24 cruise missiles.
Among US unmanned vehicles are the Reapers which are operated by a pilot from a ground station. And being used for the first time is an FLM-136 LUCAS, a one-way attack drone, which is strikingly similar to Iran's Shahed drones.
Iran has spent years manufacturing and supplying unmanned drones to its allies, and is now deploying them at scale itself. Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February,
Tehran has fired hundreds of missiles and more than 1,000 drones at Israel and Gulf states allied with Washington. The approach relies on volume rather than precision, with large numbers of drones launched simultaneously to overwhelm air defenses.
By comparison, the drones themselves are cheap to produce. One Shahed drone costs between $20,000 and $50,000, according to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
To illustrate how the barrier to entry is changing for control of military airspace, Reuters calculated how many drones could be manufactured with the funds used for just one Patriot interceptor.
The cost of one Patriot interceptor, $4 million…
In just the first week of the conflict, Iran launched more than 1,000 drones and it is estimated to have the capacity to produce around 10,000 per month.
The technology of war has evolved rapidly in recent years, a shift starkly illustrated by Ukraine's fight against Russia. What began as a conflict dominated by tanks and artillery has increasingly become a drone war.
Outgunned in conventional armor and aircraft, Ukraine turned to inexpensive unmanned systems for reconnaissance and attack. Drones are estimated to account for about 70% of Russian casualties, enabling strikes to be carried out remotely and reducing the risk to pilots and aircrews.
America's most powerful aircraft rely on highly trained crews. For example, a two-seater F-15 requires aviators to take years of training at significant cost. If one of those aircraft goes down, the United States loses not only the plane but possibly the crew aboard it too.
By contrast, low cost drones are piloted remotely. If the drone is destroyed, the operator is not killed and the replacement cost can be tens of thousands of dollars.
That imbalance has become a strategic problem. Attacking has grown cheap while the relative cost of defending has sky-rocketed, with the United States and its allies sometimes firing interceptors worth millions of dollars to shoot down drones assembled from off-the-shelf components at a fraction of the price.
The cost of a full battery system for either the THAAD or Patriot interceptors can be well over a billion dollars. The interceptor unit costs range in the millions.
"If we're shooting down a $50,000 one-way drone with a $3 million missile, that's not a good cost equation," Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, told a Senate appropriations subcommittee in May 2024, warning that the economics of air defense are becoming unsustainable.
The imbalance is already visible at sea. Since late 2023, the US Navy has expended around $1 billion or more in munitions defending ships in the Red Sea from low-cost Houthi drones and missiles, according to US officials and defense analysts.
The missile price is only part of the cost. Each interception also depends on the presence of warships and their escorts, fuel and maintenance, trained crews, intelligence and surveillance assets, and command-and-control networks needed to detect and defeat incoming threats.
First use of a LUCAS drone shows US playing catch-up with Iran
The United States is scrambling to catch up. Washington moved to fast-track small military drones, approving systems such as the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Aerial System (LUCAS) more quickly than is typical. In July 2025,
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a directive titled "Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance," ordering the Pentagon to cut red tape and accelerate drone deployment across the force, warning that adversaries are producing millions of drones each year while US efforts have been slowed by outdated procurement practices.
FLM-136 LUCAS vs Shahed: a familiar drone design
The FLM-136 LUCAS resembles Iran's Shahed, a one-way attack system that has been used extensively by Russia in Ukraine. The Shahed helped popularize a new class of weapon that functions much like a cruise missile, but at a fraction of the cost.
As attack drones have proliferated and grown cheaper, defensive counter-drone systems have lagged behind, exposing gaps in air defense.
Other anti-drone technology that could be used
Militaries are developing a growing array of technologies to counter the spread of cheap attack drones, ranging from electronic jammers and interceptor drones to high-energy lasers designed to disable targets at the speed of light.
Many of these systems promise to drive down the cost of defense by relying on electricity or reusable platforms rather than expensive missiles, but most remain limited in range, power, weather tolerance or scale, and are only beginning to be fielded outside of testing environments.
Until those systems mature and can be deployed widely, armed forces are still falling back on proven air-defense missiles to stop drones that threaten ships, bases and cities.
The challenge for the United States and its allies is whether counter-drone technology can advance fast enough and cheaply enough to match the pace of attack drones, or whether defending against them will continue to rely on costly interceptors.
