Can our drones shoot down Iran's?

We've blown up Iran's air force, their anti missile and plane defenses systems and sunk their war ships. What they are left with are drones. Lots of drones.

Will be interesting to see if we can neutralize those in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic. A lynchpin to Voldemort's invasion being successful.

Below is a WSJ story exploring such. I've also asked Claude AI to provide it's own prospective below.

This is a very timely question — Merops deployment to the Middle East is literally breaking news today. Here's a balanced assessment:

What Merops is

The Merops system flies drones against drones. It's small enough to fit in the back of a midsize pickup truck, uses AI to identify and close in on targets, and can navigate even when satellite and electronic communications are jammed. PBS The interceptor drone contains a small warhead and detonates at the target, and costs around $15,000 per unit. Wionews

The case for effectiveness

Deployed in Ukraine since mid-2024, Merops has emerged as one of the most effective counter-UAV solutions employed by Ukrainian forces against Shaheds specifically, with Ukrainian forces operationalizing the system with notable effectiveness. Foreign Policy Research Institute The Ukraine data point is important — despite multiple waves of attacks averaging hundreds of drones per night, less than 10% of Shaheds manage to hit their targets Foreign Policy Research Institute when a full layered defense (including systems like Merops) is in place.

The cost economics also favor Merops. Rather than firing interceptor missiles costing hundreds of thousands of dollars at a drone worth less than $50,000, Merops offers a far cheaper kill chain. PBS

The case for skepticism

The honest answer from U.S. officials themselves is not encouraging so far. The U.S. response to countering Iran's Shahed drones has been described as "disappointing," particularly because the drones fired by Iran are a much more basic version of the same drone that Russia continuously refines and updates in Ukraine. Fortune

Representative Jim Himes summarized it bluntly: "We are 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." India TV News

Reporting from the war with Iran is filled with video footage of Shaheds breaking through Gulf defenses — something that is relatively rare in Ukraine despite the scale of Russian attacks. Foreign Policy Research Institute The gap appears to be that the Gulf states and U.S. forces haven't built the same layered, integrated, cost-effective defensive ecosystem that Ukraine developed over years of necessity.

Bottom line

Merops is genuinely promising and addresses a real gap — it's purpose-built for exactly this threat and has a proven track record in Ukraine. But it's not a silver bullet. The Iranian drone inventory is massive, the drones are cheap and hard to radar-track, and the Gulf theater lacks Ukraine's battle-hardened integrated defense culture. Pentagon officials conceded in closed-door briefings that they are struggling to stop waves of Iranian drones, leaving some U.S. targets in the Gulf region vulnerable. Fortune Merops will help at the margins, but the math problem — Iran can produce Shaheds far faster and cheaper than any interceptor system can kill them — remains unsolved.

U.S. Army Sends Ukraine-Tested Drones to Hit Iran’s Drones

Merops drones, from a company owned by Google’s Eric Schmidt, are favored by Kyiv’s troops against Russian Shahed attacks

By Michael R. Gordon, Daniel Michaels and Alistair MacDonald, WSJ

Updated March 7, 2026 3:24 pm ET

The U.S. Army is rushing to the Middle East counterdrone systems that have been battle-tested in Ukraine, in an effort to thwart Tehran’s destructive attacks across the region, U.S. officials said.

A small number of the defensive systems, dubbed Merops, are being sent from U.S. Army stocks in Europe, along with U.S. personnel to operate them and train other troops, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials said that additional systems will be provided by the U.S. company that produces them, Perennial Autonomy, in which billionaire Eric Schmidt is an investor. Schmidt declined to comment.

A U.S. official said that Ukraine is likely to provide trainers. Ukraine didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the U.S. and its regional allies have sought Kyiv’s help against Iranian strikes.

The U.S. isn’t the only country interested in Ukraine’s battlefield experience. Representatives of Qatar and other Gulf states targeted by Iranian drones and missiles have traveled to meet with Ukrainian arms manufacturers and learn from their experience in building supply chains.

U.S. use of Ukraine-tested innovations marks a turnabout. For several years, U.S. military officers have sent equipment to Ukraine and studied the war there to learn how to defend against Russia’s large fleet of one-way attack drones. Now, Ukraine has become a laboratory for defensive systems to be used in President Trump’s new war against Iran—specifically in fending off Iran’s Shahed drones.

Shaheds, which Russia uses extensively, are an Iranian-developed weapon, so the U.S. faces a threat that is familiar from Ukraine. Moscow manufactures its own Shaheds and has developed versions that are even more advanced than those Iran is now launching.

The U.S. and its allies deployed some Merops systems in Poland and Romania last year following incursions by Russian drones. It has proved to be a popular system with Ukraine forces.

The Merops is itself a drone, small enough to be launched from a pickup truck. It can autonomously seek an incoming drone using radio waves, radar or the target’s heat signature. When roughly a mile from its target, it uses artificial intelligence to lock onto the target and detonate nearby, according to its users. Merops can travel at speeds of more than 180 miles an hour and reach an altitude of up to around 16,000 feet, according to one user.

Each Merops counterdrone drone costs less than $10,000, said one U.S. military official. The cost per unit should drop to around $7,000 as production volume increases, the official said. At least some of the Merops are produced in Taiwan, the official said.

The unit price is far lower than the cost of systems the U.S. and allies are now firing at incoming Iranian missiles and drones. Interceptor missiles from U.S.-made Patriot air-defense systems can cost around $4 million and producing them is a slow process.

A U.S. soldier installs an AS3 interceptor, part of a modular American-made AI-powered counter-drone system, MEROPS, on the back of a truck.

A U.S. soldier installs part of a counter-drone system. Kacper Pempel/Reuters

The U.S. Air Force has also put relatively cheap laser-guided rockets on jet fighters to shoot down enemy drones, a capability it employed in the clash last year with the Houthis.

Still, many interceptors—including Merops—have limitations. They have a short range and their effectiveness declines in poor weather, operators say, though that is less of a concern in the Middle East than in Ukraine.

Since Saturday, Iran has used hundreds of ballistic missiles and Shahed drones in strikes against neighboring states and U.S. military bases. One UAV attack killed six American servicemembers. The United Arab Emirates said that it was targeted by 689 drones in just the first three days of this conflict, with 44 hitting the country.

An Iranian drone damaged a radar that was for the U.S. Thaad radar system in Jordan, where numerous U.S. combat aircraft are based. The Thaad is a sophisticated and costly ground-based missile-defense system that intercepts ballistic missiles above the atmosphere. U.S. Central Command declined to comment on the radar but said that the U.S. maintains “full combat capability.”

“The Shahed isn’t a simple target,” said Col. Yuri Ihnat, a spokesman for the Air Force. “Ukrainian forces learned how to intercept them effectively through hard experience, but that process took time,” he said.

More than a dozen Qatari officials toured the production facilities of a major Ukrainian defense company on Wednesday, according to its management, and sat for meetings with its directors. That visit came the same day as Zelensky fielded calls with Gulf leaders.

Qatari officials also visited a secret training ground in Ukraine, where Merops is also used, to learn how the country brings down Russian drones with Ukrainian and other technology.

“Everyone’s phone is ringing constantly. Calls from Oman, Dubai, Qatar, U.A.E.,” said Yury Hudymenko, the head of an independent group that oversees defense procurement.

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