In Erbil, Kurdistan, videographer Wladimir van Wilgenburg filmed drones crossing the sky as U.S. defenses intercepted several, each ending in smoke and delayed ground explosions. He says Iran-launched drones are now a daily sight over the city, and most are shot down before reaching their targets. That pattern underscores two urgent questions as Operation Epic Fury continues: how long can U.S. air defenses sustain this pace, and did officials underestimate Iran’s drone threat?
The economics of the fight are lopsided. Iran’s Shahed-136 class attack drone can cost roughly $20,000–$50,000 to produce. U.S. interceptors — Patriot missiles, THAAD interceptors and similar systems — run into the millions apiece. That cost asymmetry lets Tehran drive up the financial and logistical burden of defending bases, cities and infrastructure. U.S. officials have warned of possible interceptor shortages and say they may need to pull stocks from beyond the region.
The strikes have had real consequences. Early in the campaign, an Iranian drone hit a U.S. operations center in Kuwait, killing six service members. Petroleum facilities in the UAE have been struck, two drones hit the U.S. embassy compound in Riyadh and sparked a fire, and the U.S. embassy in Iraq was also targeted. Across the Gulf, governments report hundreds of missile engagements and thousands of UAV encounters since the fighting began.
Drones span a vast range of cost and capability. At one extreme are sophisticated surveillance platforms like the U.S. RQ-4 Global Hawk, valued at roughly $130 million. At the other are expendable loitering munitions such as Iran’s Shahed family — simple, cheap and increasingly copied. Variants and look-alikes have appeared: the U.S. developed a Shahed-like prototype (LUCAS) and Russia adapted Shahed designs into the Geran series. Even consumer quadcopters, modified as loitering munitions, have become common in conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza.
Unmanned aerial systems have evolved from niche reconnaissance tools into central weapons of modern battlespaces. They now shape combat in Ukraine, Gaza and the Gulf and allow smaller states and nonstate actors to project aerial power against traditional air forces. The geometry of battlefield vigilance has changed: forces that once focused on threats from the ground and flanks must now watch the sky.
Ukraine’s battlefield improvisation was particularly influential. Facing a larger, better-armed adversary, Ukrainian forces repurposed off-the-shelf first-person-view (FPV) drones to attack tanks and armored formations, prompting major tactical shifts. Russia bought Shaheds from Iran and then produced its own loitering munitions, launching large numbers over years of war. Ukraine in turn developed countermeasures — mobile guns, electronic jamming, and low-cost intercepting drones — and reports high interception rates for Shahed-type threats. Kyiv offered to share tactics and systems; some U.S. assistance offers were not adopted wholesale.
Even advanced U.S. missile-defense networks have not neutralized every Shahed. These weapons are small, fly low and can appear over the horizon with little warning, complicating detection and interception. U.S. strikes against launchers and production facilities have reportedly reduced Iranian capacity, and some officials say drone activity has declined since the campaign began. Experts caution that a lower tempo can reflect many factors — tactical shifts, concealment, or temporary pauses — and does not eliminate the underlying vulnerability.
The fighting has effectively produced two concurrent air campaigns. High-altitude operations by U.S. and Israeli jets and long-range strikes aim to suppress Iranian air defenses and degrade production and leadership. At low altitude, swarms of Shahed-style loitering munitions are the more disruptive element, threatening bases, infrastructure, shipping lanes and civilian areas. Civilians in Gulf cities have started sheltering from drone strikes while governments rush to harden facilities and deploy layered defenses.
Many analysts say the U.S. had ample warning that cheap strike UAVs would matter. Lessons from Ukraine were widely discussed in military circles, yet those discussions did not uniformly translate into deployed, layered defenses across bases and critical sites in the Gulf. An effective layered system pairs long-range interceptors and fighters with close-in point defenses: inexpensive short-range interceptors, anti-drone guns, electronic warfare, and simple sensors to catch low-flying “leakers.” Experts argue that point defenses were underemphasized for precisely the threats now seen.
Ukraine also offered tactical innovations: small intercepting drones, dispersed mobile defenses, and low-cost sensors. Some U.S. leaders have been cautious about adopting foreign-developed systems or direct foreign assistance; others point to rapid improvisation already taking place in theater to fill gaps.
Strategically, drones change how tasks are allocated: machines can take on repetitive or high-risk missions, freeing personnel for roles requiring human judgment. But proliferation of cheap unmanned systems has not produced decisive, quick victories; more often it yields grinding attrition, as in Ukraine. The Shahed’s prominence shows that the transformation is not a single weapon but the broad availability, adaptability and low cost of unmanned systems.
As cheap drones proliferate, nations must balance investments in expensive, long-range interceptors with fielding low-cost, layered point defenses and adapting tactics to match the economics of unmanned warfare. The central challenge is aligning detection, interception and resilience with a threat that is inexpensive to produce but capable of imposing disproportionate military, logistical and political costs.