The US Army has purchased thousands of cheap interceptors since the Iran war began, its top civilian official has disclosed, as the Pentagon looks to grow its arsenal of low-cost air defenses.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told lawmakers that after the US began Operation Epic Fury, the Army purchased 13,000 interceptor drones for its Merops system within roughly eight days.
The interceptor drones “are incredible,” Driscoll said Thursday at a House Appropriations Committee hearing. “They’re about $15,000 apiece right now,” he said. “We think as they scale, they’ll get to less than [$10,000], and we’re able to take Shaheds down that cost $30,000 to $50,000.”
Driscoll said that these developments are “amazing because it puts us on the right end of the cost curve. And we will make that trade all day long.”
The US, like other militaries, has been seeking solutions to make air defense cheaper than the threats it’s designed to stop as drones reshape the battlefield.
Merops is a counter-drone system made by the US initiative Project Eagle. It launches a small interceptor called the “Surveyor” that can destroy targets like Iran’s Shahed one-way attack drone by colliding with them or exploding in proximity.
The propeller-driven Surveyor, which operators can flexibly launch from ground stations or mobile platforms like a pickup truck, can fly over 175 mph and use artificial intelligence to navigate areas saturated with electronic warfare.
The Merops system is operated by a small crew that can be trained in days, while Surveyor is piloted using off-the-shelf Xbox controllers that troops can quickly pick up.
Merops was first deployed to Ukraine, where it has intercepted more than 1,000 Shahed-type drones launched by Russia. Last year, Poland and Romania purchased the system following Russian incursions into NATO airspace.
The US military deployed Merops to the Middle East in early March after the start of Operation Epic Fury to protect American and allied forces in the region from Iranian drone attacks.
A US defense official told Business Insider that the Army surged dozens of Merops complexes — including the radar, launcher, ground control station, and Surveyor — and at least 1,000 armed and unarmed interceptors to the region.
At $15,000 apiece, the interceptors are significantly cheaper than the other counter-drone systems in the Pentagon’s arsenal and offer US forces a more cost-effective way to intercept Iranian Shaheds without expending multimillion-dollar surface-to-air missiles.
Driscoll suggested on Thursday that scaling up production could lead to a lower price tag — possibly around $10,000 per interceptor. He told Bloomberg last month that the US may be able to bring the price down to as low as $3,000, much closer to the cost of Ukrainian interceptor drones.
The Army’s Merops acquisition comes as the US and its allies show growing interest in interceptor drones after their success in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces have used them to counter mass attacks by Iranian-designed Shaheds and Russian-made variants.
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