Several experimental batteries of AI robotic gun turrets are already guarding Ukrainian energy sites, the deputy commander-in-chief says, at $35,000 to $160,000 a turret against interceptors that cost far more.
Allen Control Systems' autonomous turret joins L-MADIS under a prototype agreement worth about $6.2 million, adding bullets to a counter-drone platform that has run on jamming.
Ten nations adopted Fire Point's FREYJA as Europe's anti-ballistic program, France licensed Aster and SCALP production inside Ukraine, and five companies signed on to build the layer above it. The air-defense pipeline just reversed direction.
Lockheed Martin's GRIZZLY is a containerized missile launcher, tested in June 2026 firing a JAGM to intercept a Group 3 attack drone at Yuma, that fuses Lockheed's Sanctum battle-management software and Fortem R-40 radars into one counter-drone kill chain.
CACI's SkyValor is a long-range, autonomous counter-drone system that defeats UAS without gunfire, jamming their links and firing nets to capture them intact. The Pentagon validated it for use across the entire US Joint Force in June 2026 after a southern-border test.
Iron Wasp is a vehicle-mounted hard-kill counter-drone interceptor from Rafael and SpearUAV: a capsule-launched interceptor drone, derived from SpearUAV's Viper I, that lets armored vehicles physically destroy FPV drones and loitering munitions while on the move.
Iran answered a second night of US strikes by firing on bases in four countries, aiming, by its own account, at a Patriot battery in Kuwait and an early-warning radar in Qatar.
On NATO summit day, Ukraine flew drones 3,000 km to hit Russia's largest refinery and stopped none of 29 ballistic missiles over Kyiv. The split is the war's next phase.
The loitering-munition maker's entry into JIATF-401's Domestic Shield program turns a record quarter into a foothold in homeland counter-drone defense.
A new IISS report maps a covert, sea-launched drone campaign against Europe's rear. Brussels answered the same week with a five-project "drone wall" a fraction of the size of the problem it describes.
Kyiv's defenses stopped 90 percent of the cruise missiles and drones in Russia's 11-hour barrage. The ballistic missiles that got through are a delivery problem: interceptors Ukraine already bought have not arrived.
Iran's HESA Karrar is a jet-powered target drone adapted into claimed strike and air-defense interceptor roles, with performance and weapons claims still thinly verified outside Iranian sources.
Alta Ares is France's big-funded counter-drone startup — two years old, it raised a €50M Series A on AI guidance "combat-proven over Ukraine." It builds the anti-Shahed X-Lock and turbojet Black Bird interceptors; its Pixel Lock software is the claimed edge, though its record is self-reported.
BLAZE is the order-first entry in Europe's counter-drone wave — a radar-guided, NATO-codified interceptor drone from Latvia's Origin Robotics that flies a radar vector onto a Shahed, then finishes with AI vision. Built on a tiny ~€4M budget, it's fielded by four NATO states and picked by France.
Korkut is Türkiye's twin-35mm radar-directed anti-aircraft gun — the gun rung of the "Steel Dome" ladder below the Hisar and Siper missiles. Firing airburst rounds that throw a cone of tungsten pellets, it's the Turkish gun answer to cheap drones, like the Gepard and Skynex.
Nordic Air Defence is the smallest, cheapest, most software-first bet in Europe's counter-drone wave — a Swedish startup whose one-pound Kreuger-100XR dart loiters, then rams or blasts a Shahed for a few thousand dollars. The least-proven name in the field: no combat record, pre-production.
Alpine Eagle is the airborne outlier of Europe's counter-drone wave — a Munich startup whose Sentinel system puts the whole kill chain in the sky: a reusable "mothership" drone that flies high, carries interceptor drones, and hunts hostile drones from above rather than from a ground launcher.
Hisar is Türkiye's indigenous short-and-medium-range SAM family — the two middle rungs (Hisar-A, Hisar-O) of the "Steel Dome" air-defense ladder below the long-range Siper. ASELSAN radars, ROKETSAN missiles, and a naval version that scored a live UAV kill in 2025.
APKWS is the cheap precision kit that turns a dumb 70mm rocket into a laser-guided munition — the ~$25,000 round underneath VAMPIRE, the OA-1K, and F-16s shooting down Shaheds over the Red Sea. Not a missile, but a guidance section that clips into rockets the fleet already carries.
The Frankenburg Mark 1 is Estonia's baguette-sized interceptor missile — a ~60 cm, ~$50,000 guided rocket built by a startup to shoot down Shahed drones for a tenth the cost of a legacy SAM. The missile-class answer, distinct from FPV interceptor drones, in Europe's counter-drone wave.
Tytan is the German flagship of Europe's interceptor-drone wave — AI hit-to-kill drones (fixed-wing METIS, multicopter EOS) combat-used in Ukraine, under a Bundeswehr contract, with a NATO Innovation Fund-backed Series A and a factory scaling to 3,000 a month.
The MIM-23 Hawk is the 1950s US medium-range SAM the Pentagon retired in the 1990s — and pulled back from the grave for Ukraine. Spanish launchers, US-refurbished missiles and Taiwanese stocks now down Shaheds and cruise missiles by the score, proof that cheap depth beats exquisite scarcity.
VAMPIRE is L3Harris's bolt-on counter-drone kit — a four-round laser-guided rocket launcher and sensor that turns any pickup into a Shahed-killer for about $25,000 a shot. Fielded in Ukraine since 2023, it downed its first Shahed that December; the US Army bought in for up to $106M in 2026.
The SM-3 is the US Navy's exoatmospheric hit-to-kill interceptor — the only Standard Missile built to destroy ballistic missiles in space. It made the first combat exoatmospheric intercepts in history defending Israel in April 2024, and its magazine is now the center of the US interceptor crisis.
The Siper is Turkey's indigenous long-range SAM — the 100+ km top tier of the "Steel Dome" network, built after the S-400 purchase froze Ankara out of Western systems. Block 1 is operational, Block 2 (150+ km) is in test, and Blocks 3/4 promise missile defense.
Israel ran its Iron Beam laser alongside Iron Dome for the first time in a joint drill, letting commanders trade $50,000 interceptors for near-free laser shots against cheap drones.
A new S-400 ring is rising in Moscow's parks just as Kyiv fields balloon-launched, jam-proof weapons built to drift over it. The capital's fortification is an admission, not a solution.
India's home-built air shield — the Akash is an indigenous medium-range surface-to-air missile that guards against jets, drones and cruise missiles out to ~25 km. It performed well in India's 2025 clash with Pakistan and won its first export, to Armenia.
The shoulder-fired missile that became a star of the Ukraine war — Poland's Piorun is a modernized, sharper-eyed heir to the Soviet Igla that has knocked down Russian jets, helicopters, cruise missiles and drones, and won orders from the US Army. A cheap, mobile answer to the air threat.
Britain's drone-frying laser — a directed-energy weapon that burns aerial targets out of the sky for about £10 a shot, accurate enough to hit a £1 coin at a kilometre. After a 2024 high-power trial it won a £316m deal to arm Royal Navy destroyers from 2027.
Romania has awarded Rheinmetall a contract for 24 Skyranger 35 guns on the Lynx KF41 chassis and seven Skynex systems, the air-defense slice of a EUR 5.7 billion package and another NATO border state buying gun-and-airburst counter-drone cover at scale.
An Iran war that burned through American missile-defense stockpiles is reshaping Pentagon procurement, starting with a contract to quadruple THAAD interceptor production.
The Iron Dome maker is pushing aerial interception down to the individual vehicle, aimed at the fiber-optic FPV drones that shrug off jammers on the front.
I-SEE is betting that letting frontline units rewrite their own counter-drone software, in days rather than months, is how battlefield defenses keep pace with a threat that mutates nightly.
Iran's mobile medium-to-long-range SAM — a self-contained launcher-radar vehicle from the indigenous Raad family, Iran's rough Buk equivalent. It shot down a US RQ-4 Global Hawk over the Strait of Hormuz in 2019, the country's most famous air-defence kill.
Iran's flagship indigenous long-range SAM — an S-300/S-400-class system built to defend Tehran and its nuclear sites after sanctions delayed Russia's S-300. Iran claims it rivals the S-400; the 2025–26 air wars tested those claims hard.
An AI-driven robotic gun that shoots drones out of the sky with ordinary bullets — the "magazine-deep, ten-dollar-a-kill" answer to FPV and swarm attacks. Computer vision lays the gun; a human pulls the trigger. Fielded with the US Army and Navy and now valued at $2.2 billion.
Ukrainian intelligence says Moscow is burning through its S-300 interceptors faster than it can replace them, and the same arithmetic now drives Ukraine and its partners toward a cheaper interceptor.
The Australian firm is localizing C-UAS production for Europe's sovereign-supply push, an A$2.2 billion order book on one side and an Australian insider-trading probe on the other.
Russia's June 15 barrage put 681 weapons over Ukraine and set the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra ablaze. Ukraine stopped almost every drone and cruise missile, and barely half the ballistics.
A southern-border test validated CACI's net-and-jam system for the entire US military, the latest move in a counter-drone scramble shaped by the drone war in Ukraine and by hostile drones now killing American troops.
SkyFall says its P1-Sun interceptors have downed some 10,000 Russian drones. Now the type is headed into Airbus command-and-control, the third drone startup Airbus has signed at ILA Berlin this week.
The U.S. Army’s primary expendable jet-powered interceptor for drone defense — operated within the LIDS architecture, paired with KuRFS radar, and now arming Navy destroyers.
Russia’s strategic mobile air-defense and anti-ballistic missile system — claimed to engage ballistic missiles, hypersonic threats, and low-orbit satellites up to 600 km, now fielded by a single regiment.
Rheinmetall’s modular, unmanned 30 mm gun-missile turret — NATO’s emerging standard for mobile short-range air defense against drones, loitering munitions and low-flying aircraft, rapidly adopted across five European armies.
A cooperation deal signed at ILA Berlin would turn Airbus military helicopters into airborne launch platforms for counter-drone interceptors, starting with the H145M.
Israel's mobile, quick-reaction surface-to-air missile family built around Python-5 and Derby interceptors, spanning short-range slant-launch to extended-range vertical-launch and a single-vehicle All-in-One variant, now featuring a counter-tactical-ballistic-missile option.
Israel's modular, multi-layer air and missile defense system — a single battle-management core that mixes short-, medium- and long-range interceptors for land and naval deployments, now combat-proven and rapidly expanding its export footprint.
The Sa'ar 6 Magen class consists of four multi-mission corvettes built for the Israeli Navy to defend offshore gas fields and shipping lanes, armed with Barak-8 area-defense missiles and the shipborne C-Dome point-defense system, and recently employed in long-range strikes against the Houthis.
Germany’s modular, gun-based SHORAD system — built around the 35 mm Oerlikon Revolver Gun Mk3 and Skymaster C2, delivering cost-effective AHEAD airburst fire against drones and cruise missiles in Ukraine, and now being adopted by Italy and other NATO nations.
The US Navy's multi-role interceptor — Standard Missile 6 combines long-range air defense, terminal ballistic-missile defense, and anti-ship strike into one round, and became the first US weapon to down an anti-ship ballistic missile in combat.
A reusable, jet-powered vertical-takeoff interceptor built to hunt drones at an order-of-magnitude lower cost than legacy missiles — and land again if the threat evaporates.
Israel's mid-tier mobile air and missile defense system — a hit-to-kill interceptor designed to defeat short-range ballistic missiles, large rockets, cruise missiles and aircraft, sitting between Iron Dome and the Arrow family and increasingly central to Israel's layered shield.
The FIM-92 Stinger is a combat-proven shoulder-fired infrared-homing air-defense missile that has evolved from a Cold War MANPADS into a modern counter-drone weapon, now being refurbished, rebuilt and replaced through a multi-track programme to keep it operational into the 2030s.
Britain, France and Germany agreed to back an anti-ballistic system built around Ukraine's FP-7.x interceptor, a $700,000 missile that just hit 25 km in testing, while German industry showed its own cheap-intercept hardware at ILA Berlin.
Israel’s first operational high-power laser air-defense system — a 100 kW directed-energy weapon designed to intercept rockets, mortar bombs and drones at a fraction of the cost of kinetic interceptors, now woven into the Iron Dome network.
Israel's battle-proven mobile system for intercepting short-range rockets, artillery shells, and drones — the bottom tier of a multi-layered air defense network, now also fielded by the US Marine Corps as MRIC.
The Soviet-built S-300 family of long-range SAMs — a road-mobile system that continues to anchor Ukraine's air defense and has been repurposed by Russia for ground strikes in the Ukraine war.
Israel's exoatmospheric hit-to-kill ballistic missile interceptor, jointly developed with the U.S., combat-proven against Houthi and Iranian missiles, and now fielded by Germany as the first European upper-tier system.
The Cold War-vintage twin-35 mm self-propelled anti-aircraft gun revived as Ukraine's cost-effective counter to massed Shahed drone attacks, and the weapon system that forced Western armies to rethink short-range air defense.
Alta Ares, a Franco-Ukrainian maker of AI drone interceptors used in Ukraine, raised €50 million to scale production as demand for cheap air defense climbs.
Ukrainian long-range drones knocked off course by Russian jamming keep crossing into NATO airspace, and the Baltics want more than fighter patrols to stop them.
Beijing fielded the HQ-16F, a Patriot-class mobile air-defense missile, opposite Taiwan in the same weeks the US burned through the interceptors it would need to defend the island. The contest is magazine depth, not exquisite platforms.
Iran's first ballistic strike since April aimed at two of Israel's main air bases; the IDF claims a clean intercept, and the exchange now sits on top of the US-Iran talks.
The State Department's $1.98 billion approval puts Anduril's electronic and kinetic drone defenses in the Gulf days after an Iranian drone hit Kuwait's main airport.
Taiwan plans to mass-produce up to 1,376 Hai Chien II naval air-defense missiles, stockpiling indigenous weapons to survive a Chinese saturation strike.
Ukraine's drone force says cheap one-way drones have hit 174 Russian air-defense systems worth $5.4 billion this year, the suppression work that opens its deep-strike lanes.
Allen Control Systems raised $200M at a $2.2B valuation to scale Bullfrog, an AI-aimed gun turret that shoots drones down with machine-gun rounds instead of missiles.
Drone-on-drone interceptors now down most of Russia's Shaheds for about $2,500 each, cheap enough that the US, NATO, and Gulf states want to import the capability. Russia is scaling a 500 km/h jet drone built to beat them.
Ukraine's military has fielded an AI-controlled turret in more than ten units to shoot down the fiber-optic drones that electronic warfare cannot jam, the Defense Ministry says.
Ukraine's largest missile maker flew a prototype interceptor it says could stop ballistic missiles for under $1 million each, against a PAC-3 that runs $5.3 million, if it works by 2027.
China's medium/long-range surface-to-air missile system — a cheaper complement to the HQ-9, exported as the FK-3 and marking China’s first strategic SAM in Europe with its sale to Serbia.
China's indigenised short-range air defence system, derived from the Russian Tor-M1, providing mobile point and manoeuvre-unit protection against low-altitude threats.
China's medium-range SAM family — vertical-launch HQ-16A/B, export LY-80, and naval HHQ-16 — bridging the gap between long-range HQ-9 and SHORAD.
Russia’s latest tracked medium-range SAM — a 6-missile canisterized TELAR with active-radar fire-and-forget interceptors, fielded to thicken the lower tier of its integrated air defense.
Russia's autonomous short-range air-defense system — a single-vehicle, tracked SAM that carries 16 vertical-launch missiles for point defense against aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones, and a staple of Moscow's counter-drone shield.
Russia's mobile short-range gun-and-missile point defense system — designed to shield high-value assets from aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones, and both heavily used and increasingly targeted in Ukraine.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense — a wheeled, hit-to-kill interceptor system that destroys short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase, both inside and just above the atmosphere.
The Franco-Italian SAMP/T (Mamba) is Europe’s only long-range surface-to-air missile system with proven anti-ballistic-missile capability, fielding the Aster 30 interceptor and offering a road-mobile, 360° defense against aircraft, cruise missiles, and tactical ballistic missiles.
The NASAMS is a medium-range, distributed, networked air-defense system jointly developed by Norway and the United States, built around the ground-launched AMRAAM and proven in combat in Ukraine.
China's indigenous long-range air-defense system, a Sinicized S-300 evolution with a claimed 260 km reach, limited anti-ballistic capability, and a growing operator list, though its combat effectiveness remains largely unproven.
Germany's medium-range air-defense missile system, combat-proven in Ukraine — a road-mobile, vertical-launch SAM built to engage aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones out to 40 km, and rapidly proliferating across European and allied forces.
The Patriot PAC-3 is the United States' premier long-range air-and-missile defense system — a road-mobile, layered SAM and lower-tier BMD platform that combines blast-fragmentation and hit-to-kill interceptors to defeat aircraft, cruise missiles, and tactical ballistic missiles.
Russia's flagship long-range air-defense system — a road-mobile, layered SAM built to engage aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles out to 400 km, and the centerpiece of both its homeland shield and its arms-export diplomacy.
Lockheed says the Yuma shot paired Sanctum software, Fortem R-40 radars and a containerized launcher into one counter-drone kill chain.
The Pentagon's central counter-drone body is funding repeat buys, and a small specialist is scaling into a procurement line the drone war built.
Romania's €5.7 billion order for 298 Lynx vehicles, Skyranger air defense and four ships, financed by the EU's SAFE program, makes it the second-largest SAFE buyer after Poland.
Ukraine's foreign minister told partners to "act, not only condemn" after a 729-weapon overnight strike, naming a specific funding route to buy more Patriots.
Russia's June 2 barrage on Kyiv and Dnipro confirmed an air war split into two tiers with opposite economics, and Russia is firing into the one Ukraine cannot defend.
Germany has sent Ukraine another IRIS-T, a useful addition if missile stocks keep pace with Russia's drone and cruise-missile volume.
Multi-year delays to its US Patriot order have pushed Switzerland to gather information on European, Israeli and South Korean systems, with a Federal Council decision expected this summer, hartpunkt reported.