Since the start of the US and Israeli-led war against Iran on 28 February 2026, Iran has been retaliating against US and allied targets in the Gulf region using a combination of ballistic missiles and, most perniciously, Shahed drones.
One factor that Iran has had on its side is cost disparity: Shaheds are significantly cheaper to produce and operate than the systems that the US and its allies are using to defend against them. Shahed variants cost between $20,000 and $50,000, while missile defence systems range in the hundreds of millions to billions. That mismatch has been spurring calls for a change in focus.
Some of that has not been heeded. In the first weeks of the conflict, defence tech start-ups told Resilience Media that there will likely only be limited take-up of lower cost innovative interceptor drone-based counter-uncrewed aerial systems (C-UAS). Lengthy procurement cycles and a lack of training on new equipment are some of the gating factors, they said.
‘Connected force’ required to counter drone swarms – Anduril
More expensive interceptor missile systems, however, aren’t necessarily equipped to handle the more complex proposition of swarms of drones. C-UAS makers are quick to point this out as a counterpoint to the advantages of using missiles.
“The challenge of defeating a drone swarm with a conventional integrated air and missile defence posture is not simply the number of targets,” Rich Drake, Anduril UK managing director, told Resilience Media. “It is the way these attacks can saturate sensors and impose cognitive overload on human operators.”
Layered defence, he added, is needed by NATO members to address the threat of UAS swarms.
“Detecting the initial threat is often achievable,” he said. “The harder task is classifying the incoming threat, sharing that data across dispersed units, building a clear picture, and assigning the right countermeasure quickly enough.
C-UAS systems are not without their own human workload. Origin Robotics’ BLAZE inceptor system integrates with existing radar systems to identify targets. The startup’s marketing head Raitis Kipurs explained to Resilience Media that it requires a single operator per interceptor, with two often launched at single targets with the second interceptor there as a redundancy measure.
Startups say that technology, including autonomy, will be central to how the military responds to threats in a more effective way.
“Effective counter-UAS against swarms therefore requires compressing the kill chain – the sequence of events that starts when a target is identified, includes a decision as to whether to carry out a strike, and then the engagement itself,” said Drake at Anduril. “Multiple coordinated effects can be brought to bear at the speed of the fight.”
The UK government, like others, has for years aimed to prioritise an updated concept of munitions as wider systems, often referred to as effects or effectors.
“That requires a connected force, where data moves securely from sensor to commander to effector, and back again, in real-time. Without that, even a sophisticated system will struggle to respond fast enough,” Drake continued.
“The answer is not simply more expensive interceptors. It makes little operational or economic sense to defeat swarms of low-cost UAVs with munitions that cost many times more than the threat itself.”
Alongside startups building reputations for their next-generation systems, some primes are also expanding their work in response to the rise of new threats.
BAE, for example, is working on a new system it calls BATS, which may be a hat tip to actual bats and their swarming ways but is more specifically an acronym for “BAE Systems Anti Threat System”. The company describes BATS as a “modular, software-driven decision engine” designed to work with separate sensors and effectors and can be used to build and execute counter-swarm strategies.
Lockheed Martin in the US is developing Sanctum as its contribution to C-UAS.
Russia and China likely bolstering Iran’s offensive drone capabilities
Meanwhile, Iran is likely getting technical assistance from other countries that will continue to keep the US and its allies on its toes.
Bob Tollast, a land warfare research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Resilience Media that Russia and China are likely helping Iran with advanced electronics and access to ISR platforms to improve the effectiveness of Iran’s offensive drone capabilities.
“Iran seriously lacks space-based ISR,” he said. “Russia doesn’t have ideal coverage, but China is a major power in space. Both countries have commercial space imagery providers, almost certainly with low to non-existent restrictions on use of imagery, unlike in the West.”
“Latency would be a challenge, but good resolution would be important for targeting fixed sites and seeing if assets had moved slightly, for example, a mobile generator and supporting vehicles, which could indicate whether it is in use.”
Tollast added that Iran and Russia are likely working in a “toxic” partnership. Iran has long supplied Russia with Shaheds that it uses in its invasion and ongoing attack against Ukraine, and Russia has in turn developed variants and wider systems using those Shaheds, which it is now selling on to its business partner.
China, meanwhile, does not appear to be a buyer of Shaheds, but it’s a major component supplier to Iran for its drones, and it has been developing its own Shahed-like effectors and systems. There are further connections between how the three countries build out and operate their arsenals.
“Iran has supplied drones to allied militias in Iraq and Lebanon (Hezbollah) with devices that help counter satellite navigation jamming of drones,” Tollast said. “Russia widely uses these CRPA (controlled reception pattern antenna) devices, which are mostly assembled in Russia, but critical electronics are from China.”
Since Iran does not have an advanced microelectronics industry, he added, “you can probably deduce who is helping it.”
This isn’t to say Iranians aren’t excellent at reverse engineering and in some cases innovating, he added, but Russia “has really taken Iranian drone technology to another level.” Its modifications have included incorporating Chinese modems for radio mesh networking to bypass electronic warfare with more resilient radio links that extend over very long ranges.
“Iran is almost certainly copying or more likely benefiting from Russian advisors,” he said. “So, this cooperation, which began with Russia requesting Iran’s help in late 2022 [in Ukraine], is now a rather toxic two-way partnership.”
Coordinated drone swarms next ‘evolution’ of UAS for NATO
“Recent conflicts have demonstrated the extent to which uncrewed aerial systems have reshaped the modern battlespace,” said Iain Lamont, the UK head of Applied Intuition.
The company was recently awarded for the first phase of the Defence and Science Technology Laboratory’s Software Defined Swarms contract to lead a consortium to develop an autonomy test bed for drone swarms.
Others in the consortium include Rowden Technologies, Evolve Dynamics, SAIF Autonomy, Frazer-Nash Consultancy, and an unspecified academic partner, with Evolve Dynamics’ WOLFE-NATO serving as the main UAS platform.
NATO countries are focusing building multi-domain swarm capability in particular, he said, as a way to amplify the impact of existing troops.
“Swarming systems represent the next evolution of uncrewed capability, operating in the air, and increasingly on the ground,” said Lamont. “By allowing a single operator to control multiple drones, greater military mass is achieved without the need for additional personnel.”
The adoption of swarming technology is notable for being an example of how the military is adopting and adapting UAS technology that has been around for some time.
“Swarming capability is not new; the enabling technology already exists in the commercial sector,” Lamont said. “The opportunity therefore exists to enable the Ministry of Defence to test, evaluate and integrate swarming behaviours using both high-fidelity simulation and live flight trials.”
