alt Hacker NewsThis betrays your ignorance of drone defense tech.
The US had APKWS (anti-drone guided missiles) operational in the 2010s and these have been widely deployed. They are effective and cost less than a Shahed. These are just mods of an existing dirt-cheap rocket for which the US has an effectively unlimited supply. The Europeans have similar systems under development.
The US has deployed high-power anti-drone laser systems for a few years now with several operational kills. These are still new but are expected to replace CIWS. It can kill a drone for the cost of a Starbucks coffee and has a virtually unlimited magazine.
US pioneered military drones and defenses decades before the Ukraine/Russia war. There are many operational lessons to be learned from that war but both sides are using drone defense tech that is considerably less sophisticated than what the US has available.
> The US had APKWS (anti-drone guided missiles) operational in the 2010s and these have been widely deployed
... on 4th/5th gen fighters that cost tens of thousands per flight hour[0] based on current evidence of deployment. We're still killing mosquitoes with hand grenades.
Iron Beam/the US systems are certainly interesting, but haven't been scaled up to meaningful deployments yet.
Meanwhile, those "considerably less sophisticated" systems were fielded in exercises by the Ukranians against NATO doctrine and won handily[1].
[0] https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2026/03/fighter-j...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/nato-has-seen-the-future-and-is-...