Tracing the US military's learning curve on fighting Iran's drones: What to know

Smoke rises after an Iranian drone attack in the port area of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, March 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

By JOSH FUNK and BEN FINLEY Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Iran war quickly tested America’s ability to combat the swarms of cheap drones that have become a staple of the modern battlefield after Ukraine and Russia demonstrated how effective they could be.

The Islamic Republic launched so many drones across the region at once that some slipped through the defenses, including a strike that killed six U.S. soldiers at an operations center in Kuwait.

Experts and defense leaders stress that the U.S. military has been able to shoot down the majority of Iran’s drones and take out much of Iran’s drone capabilities. But critics said that too often missiles that cost millions of dollars were being used to down small drones that cost tens of thousands.

American forces face a steep learning curve as they scramble to deploy more cost-efficient defenses against Iran’s Shahed drones, which fly low and buzz like mopeds before smashing into their targets.

“We are crushing them — there’s no doubt about it — but if even one drone gets through our defenses and hurts an American, for me, that is enough to warrant fixing the problem,” said drone warfare expert Brett Velicovich, who operated Predator drones in the U.S. Army and co-founded a drone manufacturing company.

Here’s what to know about Iran’s drones and efforts by the U.S. to shoot them down:

US says it’s attacking the source of Iran’s drones

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday the number of drones launched by Iran had fallen 83% since the beginning of the war on Feb. 28. Iran launched more than 2,000 drones in the days after the initial U.S. and Israeli attacks, other top military officials said.

Caine told reporters that U.S. forces were striking military and industrial targets in Iran “to deny them the ability to continue to generate those one-way attack drones.”

“We also have struck several one-way drone factories to get at the heart of their autonomous capability,” he said.

Hundreds — if not thousands — of Patriot missiles have been used by the U.S. and its allies across the Middle East to defend against Iranian missiles and drones. But now the U.S. seems to be relying more on attack helicopters and machine guns as a more cost-effective way to shoot down Iranian drones, experts say, and President Donald Trump suggested as much.

“Now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones,” the Republican president said Monday.

The military also is bringing in an anti-drone system proven to work against Russian drones in Ukraine that are similar to the ones Iran flies, The Associated Press reported. Known as Merops, the system flies drones against drones, fits in the back of a pickup truck and uses artificial intelligence to navigate when electronic communications are jammed.

The U.S. military has been paying attention to Russia’s war in Ukraine, but experts say it has been slow to overhaul its arsenal and tactics to respond to the new threat from fleets of drones.

“This is going to be a big wake-up call for how the U.S. military defends its citizens and fights wars forever,” Velicovich said. “Because it’s sort of like we’re the best military on the planet, but stuff’s still getting by us.”

US is leaning on Ukraine

Pentagon officials have conceded in classified briefings to Congress that they have struggled to stop the waves of Iranian drones, leaving U.S. service members and Persian Gulf allies vulnerable. High-profile targets like a Dubai skyscraper and airports across the region have been struck.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that “thousands of Iranian missiles and drones have been intercepted and vaporized.” But he conceded, “this does not mean we can stop everything.”

Available in big numbers, the Shahed drones have shown their capability to oversaturate air defenses and inflict painful damage. And while the Shahed flies slowly at 180 kph (just over 110 mph), it can range as far as 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) and carry a relatively big load of 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of explosives.

The U.S. military has typically operated complicated reusable drones that fire off missiles and return to base, such as the Predator. But Ukraine has shown that relying on large numbers of cheap drones, which carry their payloads directly into the target and become warheads themselves, can be extremely effective.

“There is going to be a learning curve, but the more that the Ukrainians can provide us in terms of guidance and expertise I think the better off we all are,” said Brandon Blackburn, who is a former CIA targeting officer who conducted counterterrorism operations throughout the Middle East.

Ryan Brobst, a scholar focused on U.S. defense strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank, said social media posts by the U.S. military and allies have indicated the use of relatively cheaper weapons like aircraft machine guns or laser-guided rockets to destroy drones in Iran.

He cited, for example, a video posted by the United Arab Emirates military, which showed an Apache helicopter shooting a Shahed with a large machine gun.

“The United States has made significant strides in counter-UAS warfare over the past few years,” Brobst said, referring to unmanned aerial systems. “But it’s also true that we can still learn more from Ukraine.”

Looking ahead to focusing on the ‘cheap stuff’

Northwestern University professor William Reno, who researches Ukraine’s military training for the Pentagon and visits the country regularly, noted that Ukraine has found cheap ways to shoot down drones with .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the back of a pickup or other fast-moving drones.

“The long-run effect will probably be that it’s going to focus minds wonderfully on thinking more seriously about cheap stuff that comes through the air,” Reno said.

For decades, U.S. military strategy has counted on dominating the airspace above any conflict it got involved in, but the focus was primarily at higher altitudes where fighters and bombers fly. Now drones will force the military to think about what it does to control low-altitude airspace.

“Ukraine was the wake-up call,” Reno said.

The U.S. military already has some programs centered on inexpensive drones, according to Jerry McGinn, a former Defense Department official who was focused on manufacturing and industrial base policy and is now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

One of those programs is the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, which American forces are using in Iran. The U.S. military said in a post on X that the American-made, one-way attack drones were “modeled after Iran’s Shahed drones.”

“It’s not public on how effective they’ve been or how they were used,” McGinn said. “But there’s very much a focus in the U.S. of learning from the experience in Ukraine.”

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Funk reported from Omaha, Neb.