The United States and its Middle Eastern allies are turning to Ukraine for advice on how to counter Iran’s Shahed drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, according to the AP.
Zelenskyy explained that several countries, including the US, have asked Ukraine for help in defending against Iranian drones. In recent days, he discussed possible cooperation with leaders from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, AP reported.
Developed in Iran and costing only about $20,000, the Shahed has become a prominent weapon in modern conflicts, with Tehran’s ally Russia deploying drones extensively during its long-running invasion of Ukraine.
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Shahed-136 small one-way attack drones and basic cruise missiles continued to attack targets across the Middle East on Monday, March 2, according to Bloomberg.
In recent days, the drones have hit US military bases, oil facilities and civilian structures following US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran that began on Saturday and included cruise missiles, drones and precision-guided bombs.
A Shahed drone on display during the 47th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, Iran on February 11, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS (via REUTERS)
US-made Patriot air defense systems are too expensive
The air defense systems used by the Gulf states and Israel can be extremely expensive — in some cases requiring anti-missile missiles that cost between $3 million and $12 million per shot, according to U.S. Defense Department budget data.
This huge cost difference highlights the main dilemma for Iran’s adversaries that this air defense has a limited supply of anti-missile missiles, and every time one is used to shoot down a cheap Iranian drone or missile, a valuable and limited defense resource is consumed.
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The United Arab Emirates Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that of the 941 Iranian drones detected since the start of the Iran-Iran war, 65 had fallen on its territory, damaging ports, airports, hotels and data centers.
US-made Patriot air defense systems have been highly effective in intercepting Iran’s Shahed drones and other ballistic missiles, with the UAE recording an interception rate of over 90%.
However, the destruction of a $20,000 drone with a missile worth about $4 million highlights a major challenge for Western militaries: cheap weapons can quickly drain resources meant to fight far more advanced threats, Bloomberg reported.
After last year’s conflict with Israel, Iran was believed to possess roughly 2,000 ballistic missiles. He probably has an even larger supply of Shahed drones. Russia, another key producer, was reportedly able to produce several hundred of these drones each day, according to Becca Wasser, head of defense at Bloomberg Economics.
Tehran has fired more than 1,200 missiles since the start of this year’s conflict, many — perhaps most — of them by Shahed. This suggests they could be saving more damaging ballistic missiles for sustained attacks, Wasser added, as reported by Bloomberg.
Iran supplied Russia with Shahed-136 “kamikaze” drones and transferred the technical know-how that allowed Moscow to build them itself as the Geran-2. That cooperation was formalized under a contract signed in early 2023 worth about $1.75 billion that included drones and technology for domestic production in Russia, Bloomberg reported.
“The Shahed-136, among other unmanned aerial systems, has given states like Russia and Iran a cheap way to impose disproportionate costs,” said Patrycja Bazylczyk, a missile defense project analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, according to CNBC.
“They force adversaries to waste expensive interceptors on cheap drones, project power and create a constant psychological burden on the civilian population.”
These Gulf Arab states are also more vulnerable to attacks by Iran’s explosive Shahed drones because these unmanned weapons are much easier to launch than missiles, pose less risk to an attacker and can reach some targets in the Gulf within minutes. Iran is believed to have a very large stockpile, probably around 80,000 of these drones, according to The Conversation.
LUCAS drone
The Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drone, built by Arizona-based SpektreWorks, was unveiled in July 2025 at an event at the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth toured the inner courtyard along with more than a dozen companies competing to provide the military with the new equipment, Reuters reported on March 3.
Drones are increasingly becoming a cornerstone of modern warfare, a trend highlighted by their successful deployment in the war in Ukraine, including Iran’s Russian-operated Shahed systems, which bear a strong resemblance to LUCAS, Reuters reported.
(With input from agencies)
