For thirty thousand pounds you can buy a used Mini Cooper. You can also, it turns out, buy a single shot of Britain’s newest fighter-jet drone-killer — and the Royal Air Force has just proved that the maths works.

BAE Systems confirmed this week that an RAF Typhoon test and evaluation aircraft fired a guided APKWS rocket for the first time, scoring a successful strike on a ground-based target at a UK military range — the first time the Eurofighter has employed the cheap precision weapon, with air-to-air trials against target drones to follow. The trial pivots a 70-million-pound air-superiority fighter into a £30k-per-shot drone exterminator — and quietly fixes one of NATO’s most expensive embarrassments of the past three years.

Until now, the standard answer to a £20,000 Iranian-pattern Shahed drone has been a £1 million Meteor or AMRAAM missile. The maths, as more than one general has noted, “did not work in our favour.”

A 70mm Rocket With a Laser Brain

The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) is an American invention — a US Navy-led programme built by BAE Systems and first fielded by the Marine Corps. It takes the unguided 70mm Hydra rocket — a Vietnam-era area-effect weapon — and bolts on a laser-guidance kit between the warhead and the motor. The result is a precision-guided round at one-tenth the cost of a true missile.

US forces have fielded APKWS on helicopters and fast jets for years — including against Houthi drones over the Red Sea. Putting it on a Typhoon is harder: the fighter’s mission computer, fire-control radar, and weapon-management software all have to be rewritten to handle the new round. BAE has now done that work, and the firing trial confirms the integration is real, not theoretical.

Why This Changes the Drone-War Maths

The driver is Ukraine. Russia has been firing 50 to 200 Iranian-pattern Shahed drones at Kyiv per night through 2025-2026. Each Shahed costs roughly $20,000. Each AMRAAM the West fires at one costs $1 million. Western air-defence stockpiles have been bleeding faster than they can be replaced.

An APKWS-armed Typhoon can carry up to 28 guided rockets in four LAU-131 launcher pods. That’s 28 cheap kills per sortie, against an opponent who relies on swarm volume to overwhelm defences.

Belgium, France, and the Drone-Hunter Club

The Typhoon trial is the third major European integration in as many months. Belgium has been testing the Thales FZ275 laser-guided rocket on its F-16s. France has begun trialling a similar laser-guided rocket fit on the Rafale. NATO is converging on an unwritten doctrine: every front-line fighter on the continent should be able to swat cheap drones without burning a missile worth more than a small house.

The RAF says it expects to begin operational trials with front-line Typhoon squadrons before the end of 2026. If the cleared rate-of-fire matches the test, a single jet will be able to engage a swarm of seven incoming drones — and still come home with 21 rockets to spare.

Sources: BAE Systems statement, UK MoD press release, Defence News, Janes.