The United States military has sent 10,000 interceptor drones developed in Ukraine to the Middle East in an attempt to repel Iranian attacks without consuming very expensive missile defense systems, according to US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, quoted by Bloomberg.
Driscoll stated in an interview that the Merops drones, equipped with artificial intelligence, were sent within five days of the beginning of the American-Israeli operation against Iran, on February 28, writes News.ro.
The Merops drones were developed by Project Eagle, a defense initiative backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and were later sent to Ukraine in 2024.
Merops drones cost about $14,000-$15,000 each, but Driscoll said larger orders could bring the cost down to $3,000-$5,000 for each interceptor. This makes them cheaper than Iran's Shahed drones, which cost at least $20,000 and have been used in large numbers against the US and its allies in the region.
“We're actually in a better position from a cost perspective,” Driscoll said. “So every time Iran launches one that we manage to shoot down, they lose a significant amount of money,” he added.
The deployment of weapons tested in the war started by Russia in Ukraine is taking place even as President Donald Trump downplayed the need for help from Kiev in combating Iranian drones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had offered to send support to the Middle East to shoot down the drones.
“No, we don't need their help to defend against drones,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Radio conducted by Brian Kilmeade and broadcast on Friday. “We know more about drones than anyone. We have, in fact, the best drones in the world,” the US president added.
Wider use of Merops drones could change the calculus for US and Israeli forces, which have had to rely on the Patriot and THAAD air defense systems, whose missiles can cost more than $4 million each, to shoot down Iran's drones and ballistic missiles.
