Long before waves of Iranian drones began striking airports, skyscrapers and embassies across the Persian Gulf this week including high-profile sites such as Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah district and airports in the UAE, the United States military had already begun studying ways to counter the weapon behind these latest attacks.
According to a report published by The New York Times, the drones used in several of the recent strikes across the Gulf resemble Iran’s low-cost Shahed attack drones, a crude but effective weapon that has rapidly become one of the defining technologies of modern warfare across the world.
The same class of drones has been reportedly linked to recent attacks captured in viral videos showing explosions at a high-rise building in Bahrain, the Fairmont The Palm hotel in Dubai and a smoke-filled Dubai airport.
While the technology is crude, its ability to wreak havoc on glitzy cities once thought to be insulated from conflict has prompted the United States to abandon traditional playbooks and build its own ‘American’ version of the Iranian weapon.
Other strategic locations targeted by these drones include the US Embassy in Riyadh and Amazon data facilities in the UAE, though the exact drone models in every incident have not been independently verified, the report said.
Slow is Lethal: Why are Shahed drones hard to defend against?
Perhaps the most dangerous feature of these drones is actually their lack of speed. While advanced air defense systems are designed to intercept high-velocity missiles, these drones are so slow and fly at such a low altitude that they are effectively invisible to many modern radar softwares.
According to the NYT report, Radar software is often programmed to filter out slow-moving objects to avoid seeing birds or civilian Cessnas. So when adjusted to catch these drones the systems often become overwhelmed by false positives, making it difficult for the military to completely eliminate all targeted drones.
This “slow and low” profile creates a massive economic problem for countries defending such attacks. As per the NYT report, Arabic defence forces are often forced to use high-tech interceptors costing as much as $3 million per shot to take down a drone that costs only $35,000.
Cheap drones driving a new phase of war
Roughly 10 feet long with an eight-foot wingspan, the Shahed drone carries an explosive payload in its nose and detonates on impact. After a target’s coordinates are entered, the drones can travel hundreds of miles autonomously.
Each unit costs roughly $35,000, making it dramatically cheaper than traditional missiles.
According to Defense analysts interviewed by The New York Times, the low price of the drones allows countries to launch them in large swarms, overwhelming sophisticated air-defence systems.
“They’re designed to wreak havoc,” Anna Miskelley, a defense analyst at Forecast International, told The NYT. “It plays really well in the media, too, when you have these videos of explosions,” he added.
In his comments to the media outlet, Anna noted that the drones’ very visible and dramatic way of striking his target while creating a loud sound also attracts much human and media attention.
The US response: Americanise the weapon
Rather than only trying to destroy the drones, the US military reportedly decided to reverse-engineer them.
According to the NYT report, American researchers in 2024 studied Shahed drones originally to use them for target practice while developing counter-measures. But the project soon evolved into something else: building a similar drone of their own.
The result was the Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Aerial System or LUCAS. The drone has reportedly already been used by US forces in recent operations to strike infrastructure and overwhelm Iranian air-defence systems.
Developed by SpektreWorks, a small defence start-up based out of Arizona. Analysts interviewed by NYT believe that the American drone system likely relies on satellite communications such as Starshield (a military variant of SpaceX’s Starlink network) to reach hostile targets.
Reports of LUCAS using Starshield have not yet been confirmed but analysts believe that using a commercial network might provide an explanation into the drone’s simplified cost structure.
As per American officials, LUCAS’s real achievement is not the technology itself but the speed of its development. The military reverse-engineered a competitor’s weapon and fielded its own version in roughly 18 months. The $35,000 price tag, compared with a $2.5 million Tomahawk cruise missile, makes the economics hard to argue with.
Lessons from Ukraine’s drone war
The tactics now visible in the Gulf conflict were earlier seen in the Russia-Ukraine war, where Shahed drones have been used extensively since 2022.
Ukrainian forces have developed unusual counter-measures, including acoustic detection systems that listen for the drone’s distinctive lawn-mower-like buzzing sound, along with interception methods ranging from machine guns and electronic jamming to nets and other drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv has been discussing drone-defence technology with US officials and leaders in Gulf states as attacks intensify.
“Ukraine’s expertise in countering ‘Shahed’ drones is currently the most advanced in the world,” Zelensky had told Arabic forces when asked for strategies to counter Shahed drones.