The development and proliferation of loitering munitions since 2020 have forced a significant rethink of anti-air warfare (AAW) planning and procurement.
In the conflicts that have occurred since 2020 (i.e., the Second Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War, the most recent Indo-Pak Conflict, and the ongoing US-Iran War), loitering munitions have proven that the traditional cost barriers to conducting long-range, high-impact strikes at scale no longer stand.1
In addition, the cost of stopping loitering munitions and drone swarms with traditional AAW solutions – notably surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) – is now prohibitive relative to the scale and intensity that these emergent threats can impose. For example, the cost of a single Shahed-style loitering munition could be within $50,000, while the SAM interceptor could start at $500,000. Aside from SAM depletion, there is no feasible way of ensuring that there are enough traditional SAMs to stop every loitering/swarming drone; however, when the latter is launched at a scale of tens of thousands per volley, even marginal success rates of 5-10% can have devastating effects on the recipient. For example, it would only take one or two loitering munitions to neutralize a high-value air defence radar.
Thus, loitering munitions pose a threat that combines scale, reach, and cost-asymmetry risks, where even a dismal <10% hit rate can degrade the recipient’s warfighting. In effect, such threats necessitate specialized solutions capable of countering these drones on a comparable scale and cost.
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