Iran’s drone swarms challenge US air defenses as troops in Middle East face rising threats
Cheap Iranian drone attacks are forcing the Pentagon to rapidly expand layered air defenses in the Middle East, as thousands of U.S. troops stationed across the region face an escalating aerial threat that is testing the limits of traditional missile defenses.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) said Tuesday its air defenses detected nine ballistic missiles and 35 drones launched by Iran. Eight missiles were intercepted while one fell into the sea.
Of the 35 drones, 26 were shot down and nine crashed on UAE soil, the country said.
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The engagement highlights how the battlefield is shifting.
Ballistic missiles travel high and fast, allowing long-range interceptors such as the Patriot air defense system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) to engage them predictably. Drone swarms, which Iran increasingly has relied on in recent exchanges, present a different challenge to U.S. forces.
They fly lower, move slower and often arrive in clusters, making them harder to detect and more likely to strain defenses built for high-speed threats.
U.S. troops already have been directly affected by one-way attack drones in the region. In a March 1 strike near Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, six American service members were killed and dozens wounded when an Iranian drone hit a tactical operations center.
Each interception also carries a cost.
High-end missile interceptors can run into the millions of dollars per shot.
Many of the drones they are designed to defeat are far cheaper and produced in large numbers — creating what defense officials have described as a growing “math problem” in modern warfare. The U.S. can end up firing expensive missiles at relatively inexpensive drones, a dynamic that becomes harder to sustain if attacks come in waves.
That imbalance is accelerating a push inside the Pentagon to expand a layered counter-drone strategy — combining short-range interceptors, electronic warfare tools and emerging technologies such as high-energy lasers.
For U.S. forces in the region, larger drone waves increase the odds that defenses are stretched, and that even one drone could reach a base or ship.
This marks the first sustained confrontation in which U.S. forces are facing large-scale, state-backed drone waves as a central feature of the battlefield — forcing commanders to adapt in real time and draw on lessons learned from Ukraine, where mass-produced Shahed drones reshaped air defense strategy.
Lasers and staying power
Among the new U.S. systems drawing renewed attention are high-energy lasers.
Directed energy is being developed and tested for counter-drone missions and has been used in limited domestic contexts.
U.S. defense officials say lasers offer a potentially significant advantage: Once powered, they can fire repeatedly without expending traditional ammunition.
Unlike missile interceptors, which must be replaced after each launch, a laser system can continue engaging targets as long as sufficient power is available. In theory, that provides sustained defensive capacity during large drone waves.
“It’s a function now of our procurement system, moving those things to the troops as fast as we can,” retired Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet, told Fox News Digital.
Donegan acknowledged the technology is real but not yet fully fielded across combat zones.
Scaling high-energy systems requires power generation, integration and infrastructure — all of which take time.
A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News Digital that directed energy systems have been tested and employed to counter drones in combat scenarios, and the Pentagon “continues to work to scale this capability as quickly as possible.”
Central Command, the U.S. military command tasked with overseeing the Middle East, declined to comment on whether lasers are part of its current drone defense system against Iran.
Building defensive depth
While lasers represent a longer-term evolution, commanders are relying on multiple defensive layers today.
The recent deployment of the Merops drone-on-drone interceptor into U.S. Central Command reflects that approach.
Developed by U.S.-backed defense firm Perennial Autonomy, Merops is a mobile counter-drone system that launches small interceptor drones from a truck-mounted platform to disable incoming threats. The system was battle-tested against Shahed drones in Ukraine and fielded in NATO countries such as Poland before being accelerated into the Middle East as drone activity intensified.
A former defense official familiar with counter-drone operations said effective counter-UAS capability depends on overlapping systems integrated around high-value targets rather than reliance on a single interceptor.
“Effective counter-UAS capability is overlapping,” the official said. “No one system solves the drone problem by itself.”
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U.S. ships in the region rely on short-range missile systems such as the Rolling Airframe Missile and Sea Sparrow, along with the Close-In Weapon System, a radar-guided rapid-fire gun that can engage threats at close range.
Ground-based defenses incorporate radar detection with specialized interceptors such as Raytheon’s Coyote family, designed to defeat small unmanned aircraft. Industry systems like Anduril’s Roadrunner add autonomous interceptor drones capable of engaging airborne threats and, in some configurations, returning for reuse.
Success begins with early detection. Radar systems track low-flying drones and give operators time to choose whether to jam, intercept or destroy incoming threats.
“We’ve built into the weapon systems of all our military platforms that are combatants counter-drone capability,” Donegan said.
Lessons from Ukraine
Iran’s Shahed drones were refined during Russia’s war in Ukraine, where cities faced nightly waves of low-cost one-way attack aircraft. There, layered defenses combining short-range interceptors, electronic warfare and evolving technologies proved essential in absorbing sustained attacks.
Ukrainian officials have said some cities faced more than a hundred drones in a single night, forcing air defense crews to remain on alert for hours at a time.
Ukraine has since offered to share its battlefield experience with the United States and Gulf partners as Iranian drone activity expands in the Middle East.
Officials say those lessons are influencing U.S. planning.
“JIATF-401 is accelerating procurement of multiple counter-UAS capabilities across several combatant commands, including sensing radars, kinetic interceptors and other available systems, not just Merops, to expand layered defenses in the U.S. Central Command area of operations,” a U.S. official said.
“Some of the capabilities being surged to support our warfighters reflect lessons we are learning and technology we are transferring from the battlefield in Ukraine.”
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The result is expanding defensive depth — designed to absorb and defeat a threat that is inexpensive, persistent and increasingly central to modern warfare.
For the troops stationed at those bases and aboard those ships, that layered defense is what stands between a drone intercepted in the sky and one that reaches its target.
As drone production scales and tactics evolve, the contest between low-cost attack drones and layered air defenses playing out in Iran the future of warfare itself.
Ukrainian Paralympian Maksym Murashkovskyi wins silver medal after training with ChatGPT for 6 months
After training with ChatGPT over the last six months, Ukrainian biathlete Maksym Murashkovskyi won a silver medal at the 2026 Milan Cortina Paralympic Games.
Murashkovskyi, 25, said he used the AI chatbot in a variety of ways throughout his training.
“For the past six months, I have been training with ChatGPT,” Murashkovskyi said, according to The Athletic.
“It was not only tactics. It was half of my training plan, motivation, etc. So it was a huge volume of all of my training.
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“I used it as a psychologist, coach and, sometimes, as a doctor.”
Murashkovskyi won a few medals at the Para Biathlon World Cup in January and gave credit to ChatGPT for his success.
“I also won a few medals there, and even a gold. So, I can give great credit to ChatGPT,” he said. “I believe in it, it is a revolutionary technology.”
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Murashkovskyi was asked if AI could replace coaches, psychologists and doctors, and he agreed to an extent.
“Not completely for five to 10 years. But part of it, definitely,” he said.
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Murashkovskyi competed under the NS3 classification, which applies to athletes with the lowest level of visual impairment. He ran the race alongside his guide skier, Vitaliy Trush. For the NS2 and NS3 competitors, guide skiers are optional, but they are mandatory for NS1 athletes.
Murashkovskyi finished with a time of 33:41.1 in the men’s individual vision-impaired event Sunday. He was just over two minutes behind Chinese gold medalist Dang Hesong and beat his compatriot Dmytro Suiarko for second place.
Ukraine sending drone team to help protect US bases in Jordan at Washington’s request, Zelenskyy says
Ukraine has dispatched interceptor drones and a team of drone specialists to help protect U.S. military bases in Jordan as fighting tied to the Iran war intensifies across the region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with The New York Times.
Zelenskyy told the NYT that Washington made the request on Thursday, and Kyiv moved swiftly to respond, dispatching the drone team the following day.
“We reacted immediately,” Zelenskyy said. “I said, yes, of course, we will send our experts.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for confirmation.
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The reported request comes as the U.S. and Gulf states work to intercept hundreds of Iranian missiles and thousands of drones launched in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian drones have struck the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, including an attack on a tactical operations center in Kuwait that killed six U.S. service members.
The high volume of Iranian Shahed drone launches has drawn attention to the cost disparity between the relatively inexpensive unmanned aircraft and the far more sophisticated air defense systems, such as Patriot missiles, used to intercept them.
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According to the Department of the Army’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget estimates, the cost for a single Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor is $3.8 million.
A basic Iranian-designed Shahed drone costs roughly $20,000 to $50,000, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
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“Iran knows it can’t match the U.S. or Gulf states plane for plane or missile for missile, but it can change the economics of the conflict,” said Patrycja Bazylczyk, an associate director with the Missile Defense Project at CSIS, in an interview with Military Times.
“Drones let Iran punch above its weight, keep its adversaries off balance, and project power across the region at minimal cost. We can’t just play whack-a-mole in the sky,” she added. “Shooting drones down one by one is the most expensive way to fight the cheapest threat. We have to go after the roots – the launch sites, the production lines, and the storage depots.”
Russian missile strike kills 10 in Ukraine as Trump says ‘hatred’ between countries complicating peace deal
A Russian ballistic missile strike on a residential building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, killed at least 10 people, including two children, and wounded 16 others Saturday, officials said.
The strike was part of a broader overnight assault in which Russia launched 29 missiles and 480 drones targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, with damage reported in Kyiv and at seven other locations across the country, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy called for an international response following the attack.
“There must be a response from partners to these savage strikes against life. I thank everyone who will not remain silent. Russia has not abandoned its attempts to destroy Ukraine’s residential and critical infrastructure, and therefore support must continue,” he said in a post on X.
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“We count on active work with the European Union to guarantee greater protection for our people,” he added. “I am grateful to everyone who helps strengthen our protection.”
Preliminary Ukrainian data showed air defense systems downed 19 missiles and 453 drones, while nine missiles and 26 strike drones hit 22 locations.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the strikes targeted Ukrainian military factories, energy facilities and air bases.
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Speaking Saturday at the Shield of the Americas Summit in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump said the “hatred” between Russia and Ukraine was complicating efforts to reach a peace deal.
“It’s so great that, you know, Ukraine, Russia, you’d think there would be a little bit of camaraderie, [but] there’s not. And the hatred is so great. It’s very hard for them to get there. It’s very, very hard to get there. So we’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “But we’ve been close a lot of times and one or the other would back out.”
“But we’re losing, you know, they’re losing, you know, doesn’t really affect us very much because we’ve got an ocean separating. I’m doing it as a favor to Europe, and I’m doing it as a favor to life because they’re losing 25,000 souls,” Trump added. “Think of that every month. 25,000. Last month, 31,000. Both sides, 31,000 people died, mostly soldiers.”
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Last month, Zelenskyy told Fox News that Russia is trying “to play with the president of the United States” and stalling U.S.-brokered efforts to end the war.
Trump says ‘hatred’ between Putin, Zelenskyy blocking Ukraine peace deal
President Donald Trump said Saturday that the “hatred” between Russia and Ukraine is getting in the way of reaching a peace deal in that conflict, where the death toll is getting worse.
Trump, speaking at the Shield of the Americas Summit in Doral, Fla., told world leaders assembled there that, “The hatred between Putin and his counterpart is so great.”
“It’s so great that, you know, Ukraine, Russia, you’d think there would be a little bit of camaraderie, [but] there’s not. And the hatred is so great. It’s very hard for them to get there. It’s very, very hard to get there. So we’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “But we’ve been close a lot of times and one or the other would back out.”
“But we’re losing, you know, they’re losing, you know, doesn’t really affect us very much because we’ve got an ocean separating. I’m doing it as a favor to Europe, and I’m doing it as a favor to life because they’re losing 25,000 souls,” Trump added. “Think of that every month. 25,000. Last month, 31,000. Both sides, 31,000 people died, mostly soldiers.”
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Fox News in late February that Russia is trying “to play with the president of the United States” and stalling U.S.-brokered efforts to end the war.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine is ready to freeze the conflict along its current lines, proposing a ceasefire followed by negotiations. But he said he would not accept a Russian demand for Ukraine to surrender territory the Russian army has not been able to capture in four years of fighting.
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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in January that Russia is losing between 20,000 and 25,000 troops each month in its war against Ukraine as fighting drags on into a fourth year.
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Rutte told the Renew Europe Global Europe Forum in Brussels at the time that the staggering number of casualties reflects the intensity of Ukraine’s defense but warned that Russia remains NATO’s most significant long-term threat.