A cheap drone is a hard thing to stop. It is small, slow and low, which makes it difficult to see on radar, and it is so inexpensive that firing a conventional air defence missile at it is a losing trade. Since 2022 the war in Ukraine has turned that problem from a niche concern into one of the central questions of modern air defence.

Counter-drone systems are the answer, or rather a family of answers. The US military describes the job in four steps: detect, track, identify and defeat. Here is how each step works, and why no single system can do all of it alone.

Detect and track: no perfect sensor

Every sensor has a weakness, which is why counter-drone systems layer them. According to the US Congressional Budget Office, radar offers the longest reach, around six miles in its benchmark, but needs line of sight. RF detectors listen for the radio link between a drone and its pilot out to about 2.5 miles, but are useless against drones flying autonomously or controlled through a fibre-optic cable. Visible and infrared cameras can confirm what a target is but suffer in bad weather, and acoustic sensors are cheap and passive but easily confused by background noise.

Ukraine shows how far the layering can go. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, its anti-Shahed network includes tens of thousands of acoustic sensors whose data is fused with radar and radio detections in a common operating picture, then passed to mobile fire teams, electronic warfare units, aircraft and interceptor drones.

Soft kill: break the link

The gentlest way to stop a drone is to cut its connection. Jamming or spoofing the control link can make a drone hover, land or fly home; the CBO puts the typical range at one to two miles. More sophisticated "RF-cyber" systems, such as D-Fend's EnforceAir, identify the drone's make and model, take over its control link and land it at a chosen safe spot without jamming everything around it. The catch is that none of this works against a drone that does not use a radio link at all.

Hard kill: guns, rockets and drones against drones

When a drone has to be destroyed, the cheapest bullet wins. Germany's Gepard, twin 35 mm cannons on a tank chassis, became one of Ukraine's most effective anti-Shahed weapons; Germany had delivered 46 by September 2023. Rheinmetall's Skynex fires 35 mm AHEAD airburst rounds that release a cloud of fragments in front of the target, at 1,000 rounds a minute.

In the air, US Air Force F-16s over the Red Sea began using APKWS laser-guided rockets against Houthi drones in 2024. According to The War Zone, the guidance kit costs about $15,000, against roughly $420,000 for an AIM-9X Block II and more than $1 million for an AIM-120. Cheaper still are interceptor drones: the US Army's Coyote, and in Ukraine designs such as Wild Hornets' Sting, which costs about $2,500.

NATO tests counter-drone technology (NATO Communications and Information Agency).

Directed energy: lasers and microwaves

The newest layer fires light or radio energy instead of projectiles. Britain's DragonFire laser, developed by MBDA, Leonardo and QinetiQ with the Ministry of Defence's Dstl, first shot down aerial targets at the Hebrides range in January 2024. The UK says a shot costs about £10 and that the beam is precise enough to hit a £1 coin from a kilometre away. A £316 million contract in November 2025 put it on track for a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer from 2027.

Israel declared its Iron Beam laser operational in September 2025 and took delivery of the first system in December 2025; it is designed to work alongside Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow, but like all lasers it struggles in heavy cloud. High-power microwave weapons such as Epirus Leonidas go after electronics instead: in an August 2025 demonstration in Indiana, Leonidas disabled all 61 drones flown, including a 49-drone swarm with a single pulse.

The cost-exchange problem

All of this is driven by arithmetic. A Shahed-type drone costs somewhere between about $10,000 and $50,000, depending on the estimate. A Patriot interceptor costs several million dollars. CSIS reports that Russian Shahed launches rose from about 130 a week before September 2024 to a peak of about 1,100, and that Moscow accepts losing most of them as long as some get through.

That is why counter-drone defence is moving towards cheap guns, cheap rockets, cheap interceptor drones and nearly free laser shots, all tied together by sensors and software. The Congressional Budget Office's conclusion is the honest one: no single system provides full protection. The defence that works is the one with the most layers.

BFBS Forces News with declassified footage of the DragonFire laser weapon.

The Wall Street Journal on how Israel's Iron Beam laser works.

Sources: Congressional Budget Office, CSIS (Jensen and Atalan), UK Ministry of Defence, RTX/Raytheon, Epirus, The War Zone, Times of Israel, Just Security, D-Fend Solutions