Merops

Merops became the counter-drone system of the Iran conflict in March 2026 when the US Army diverted 10,000 units directly from the Ukraine supply pipeline to the Middle East, arriving within five days of the war's start. Developed by Project Eagle with backing from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the system was credited with 40% of all Shahed drone kills in Ukraine before its Gulf deployment.

At $14,000-15,000 per unit, Merops costs less than a single Iranian Shahed-136. That cost inversion matters: most counter-drone economics favour the attacker, whose cheap swarm forces the defender to expend expensive interceptors. Merops reverses that ratio. At scale the price falls to an estimated $3,000-5,000. The system fits in a pickup truck and operates autonomously under GPS and communications jamming, a capability battle-tested in Ukraine's electronic warfare environment.

The Gulf deployment exposed a supply constraint. Ukraine depends on Merops for the same Shahed threat the system now counters in the Gulf, and the Pentagon has not disclosed whether Kyiv's allocation will be backfilled. Eleven nations had already requested access to Ukrainian-pattern interceptors; Merops emerged as the US-manufactured answer built on Ukrainian combat data.