The distinctive buzz of Iranian-designed drones has become a familiar sound in Ukraine over the past four years. Now, it is increasingly heard across the Persian Gulf as Tehran strikes back with these cheap but effective weapons following the attack by the US and Israel against Iran.
Iran’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drones – small, rudimentary cruise missiles – have hit US bases, oil infrastructure and civilian buildings since the US and Israel airstrikes on Iran began on Saturday.
The waves of drones are putting pressure on the defences of the US and its partners from Bahrain to the United Arab Emirates, depleting weapons stockpiles. The outcome of the fight may depend on which side runs out of munitions first.
US-made Patriot air-defence missiles have been largely successful in stopping the Shaheds and other ballistic missiles, with interception rates over 90 per cent, according to the UAE.
But using $US4 million ($5.6 million) missiles to destroy $US20,000 drones illustrates a problem that has haunted Western military planners since early in the Ukraine war: cheap weapons can chew up resources meant for much more complex threats.
The result is that both Iran and the US may run low on weapons in a matter of days or weeks. Whoever can last longer will gain a serious advantage.
Iran’s regional proxies were severely weakened by the war in Gaza, and its missile capabilities were damaged by the previous Israeli-US attacks in a 12-day war in June 2025.
Since then, the emphasis for Iran has been to escalate its warnings about the consequences and costs of a Trump strike, knowing that the US president’s supporters are broadly opposed to drawn-out, messy wars.
Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei – who died in Saturday’s airstrikes – warned that a US attack would lead to a wider conflagration embroiling the whole region.
“Attrition strategy makes operational sense from Iran’s perspective,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Centre think tank.
“They are calculating that the defenders will exhaust their interceptors and the political will of Gulf states will crack and put pressure on the US and Israel to cease operations before they run out of missiles and drones.”
Qatar’s stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles will last four days at the current rate of use, according to an internal analysis seen by Bloomberg News. Doha has been privately urging a swift end to the conflict.
Packing a punch at a fraction of the cost
While ballistic and cruise missiles fly much faster and pack a bigger punch, they cost millions and are available only in limited quantities. A Shahed drone costs only tens of thousands of dollars – a tiny fraction of a ballistic missile.
In large numbers, the drones have demonstrated their ability to overwhelm air defences and inflict significant damage at very low cost.
Following Russia’s botched attempt to capture the Ukrainian capital after its full-scale invasion with tanks, troops and missiles in February 2022, the fighting has turned into a war of attrition that has been increasingly shaped by drones.
While swarms of small drones have played a decisive role on the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine have also increasingly relied on longer-range drones to attack deep into each other’s territory.
After reaching a deal with Tehran to import Shahed drones early in the war – Shahed means “witness” in Farsi – Russia localised its production. Russian engineers have increased its altitude, made it more resistant to jamming, and fitted it with more powerful warheads.
Russia’s version of the Shahed – known as Geran or “geranium” – has been put into production at a plant in the Russian province of Tatarstan, which has exponentially increased output. Since then, Russia has battered Ukraine with hundreds of drones in a single night – more than were used during some entire months in 2024.
By using large numbers in a single attack, Moscow’s strategists seek to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences and distract them from engaging more expensive cruise and ballistic missiles that Russia often uses alongside the drones to hit high-value targets.
And while it flies relatively slowly at 185km/h, the Shahed has a range of about 2000 kilometres and packs a punch with a warhead of about 40 kilograms of explosives. Ukrainians have dubbed them “mopeds” for their distinctive buzz.
Ukraine has relied on mobile teams armed with machineguns as a low-cost response to the drones to spare using more-expensive Western-supplied air defence missiles. It has also developed interceptor drones and is working to increase production, but the steady rise in Russian attacks has strained its defences.
Patrick Bury, a professor of security issues at the University of Bath in Britain, said drones had transformed warfare, thanks to the combination of “the persistent surveillance and the high-precision strike” coupled with improved targeting systems and artificial intelligence.
He noted that Shahed drones could be easily hidden in the back of a truck.
“What has taken people by surprise … is the ferocity and the scale with which Iran has retaliated this time”, compared with its response to the 12-day war with Israel and the US in June 2025, Bury told the Associated Press.
“What the US and the Israelis are hoping, I think, and calculating, [is] that they can degrade that enough to basically then take some of the steam out.”
Many observers noted that the US and its allies could tap the experience that Ukraine gained in dealing with Russian drone attacks.
“Our military must do more ASAP to institutionalise defensive lessons from Ukraine,” said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment think tank, posting on X.
Attacks in the Gulf and beyond
Officials in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates said on Sunday that air defences had dealt with 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and more than 540 Iranian drones over two days. While officials said they had intercepted all air attacks on Saturday, debris from the knocked-down weapons sparked blazes at some of Dubai’s most well-known locations.
Social media footage from Sunday showed another Shahed drone falling to earth close to the city’s Palm Jumeirah archipelago, exploding in a fireball.
Other Iranian drones flew as far as a British military base in Cyprus. The runway at the Royal Air Force base in Akrotiri was struck by a drone – probably launched by Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon – on Sunday, according to British officials. Sirens blared there again a day later when two more drones heading towards the base were intercepted.
Greek Defence Minister Nikos Dendias said on Monday that Greece would defend Cyprus “with any possible means”, and that it was sending two frigates to Cyprus, one with an anti-drone system, as well as four F-16 fighter jets.
AP, Bloomberg
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