The drone swarm is coming, and NATO air defenses are too expensive to cope

Summary

NATO is unprepared to deal with attacks by cheap, mass-produced drones and urgently needs layered, affordable air defense systems to counter the threat, taking a cue from the experience gained by Ukrainian forces over the past four years. Experts at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) recently held a debate on the lessons armed forces should take from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, highlighting that low-cost drones are reshaping how wars are fought. CEPA describes itself as a nonpartisan, public policy institution, headquartered in Washington, DC. The takeaway from Iran's tactics is that adversaries are likely to combine precision weapons with cheap, mass-produced drones to overwhelm air defense systems so that the precision weapons can get through. Managing this threat means developing low-cost defensive weapons, produced and used at scale, to complement the interceptor missiles costing millions that are built to target aircraft and ballistic missiles. "The question is no longer how just to defeat a threat. The question is how to do so to sustainable cost and scale," said Gordon "Skip" Davis, former deputy assistant secretary general for NATO and previously director of operations for US European Command. He noted a decisive shift in the character of war: Iran has shown that relatively unsophisticated weapons like the Shahed-type drones, which cost $20,000 each, can impose real operational stress on even the most advanced forces such as the US and its regional allies. Ukraine is ahead of NATO in one critical area – the ability to produce and deploy low-cost systems at scale. It is manufacturing tens of thousands of interceptor drones annually, and delivering them to frontline units at rates exceeding 1,500 per day. Instead of relying solely on expensive interceptors, Ukraine has built a layered system in which cheap one-way interceptor drones - costing as little as $2,000 - now account for the majority of drone takedowns across the country. This...