Drones costing as little as $400 USD have been destroying $2 million USD armored vehicles in Ukraine. $500 to $1,000 First Person View (FPV) drones are destroying equipment and taking lives that cost orders of magnitude more to field. The math of modern warfare has shifted, and the side producing cheap weapons at scale is setting the terms of every engagement. There is a gap at the heart of current air defense: close-in systems can engage targets within a few hundred meters, and long-range missile systems can reach targets kilometres away, but in the 1.6 to 3 km window where most battlefield drones operate, there is almost nothing cheap enough to field at scale. What is needed is a simple semi-guided rocket to fill that gap. So why does the United States not have one yet?
Ukraine is defining this new warfare. Before Ukraine's FPV program, the baseline for a cheap attack drone was $20,000 to $50,000, the cost of a Shahed-136 loitering munition. Ukraine broke that floor, driving the cost of an effective FPV attack drone down to $300 to $500 using commodity electronics and mass production. By contrast, the United States' cheapest loitering munition is the Switchblade 300 at around $6,000, with its primary strike drone, the MQ-9 Reaper, at $32 million per unit. China's export strike drones like the Wing Loong II run $1 to $2 million. Most established militaries are still operating in the $1 million and above range.
China is now producing more drones than the United States and Europe combined. Future warfare will not be fought with a few hundred expensive platforms. It will be fought with swarms, hundreds or thousands of cheap drones flooding a battlefield at once. The new metric is not who can build the most. It is who can field counter-weapon systems that are cheaper than the weapons they are trying to stop. In World War 2, the American advantage was production. Build more planes, more tanks, more ships than the enemy could destroy, and you win. That lesson shaped US military doctrine for decades. But lately the US has prioritized expensive platforms over production volume. It is time to invest in weapons that scale logistically.
| System | Country | Type | Cost per Unit (approx.) | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FPV Kamikaze Drone | Ukraine | One-way attack | ~$300–$500 | Cheap mass-produced attack; commodity electronics and FPV frame |
| Baba Yaga | Ukraine | Heavy lift / area bomber | ~$10,000–$20,000 | Converted agricultural drone; drops grenades and mortar rounds |
| P1-Sun | Ukraine | Interceptor / attack | ~$1,000 (target) | Designed from the ground up for mass production; attack and intercept roles |
| Shahed-136 (Geran-2) | Iran / Russia | Loitering munition | ~$20,000–$50,000 | Saturates air defenses through volume; cheap enough to absorb interceptors that cost more |
| Wing Loong II | China | MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) strike drone | ~$1M–$2M | Export-focused Reaper equivalent; widely sold to Middle East and Africa |
| Switchblade 300 | USA | Loitering munition | ~$6,000 | Anti-personnel; backpackable; one-way attack |
| Switchblade 600 | USA | Loitering munition | ~$50,000–$70,000 | Anti-armor; Javelin-comparable effect |
| Altius-600 | USA | Loitering munition | ~$30,000–$50,000 | Air or ground-launched; modular payload; ISR and strike capable |
As drone adoption grows, so does the scale of deployment. Future battles will have two scaling factors that decide the winner: scale of production and the ability to counter the enemy's production. There is a need for counter-weapon systems that can take out drones of various sizes, that can be carried to the field in numbers large enough to counter high volumes of drones, and most of all cheap to make.
Most countries are seeking directed energy counters like lasers and electronic warfare, but those come with trade-offs and are really only practical for defending large fixed targets like ships and bases. The core problem with combat lasers is power. An effective system requires megawatts of power output, which is feasible on a warship but not practical on a vehicle operating in the field. Today most militaries are fitting fast-firing miniguns to tanks and vehicles to provide a cheaper defensive option, but that comes with high ammunition consumption and makes it hard to keep units supplied.
What is needed is a semi-guided rocket that costs no more than $1,000 to make. This semi-guided rocket can be used to intercept drones of various sizes, but if designed well it could serve in multiple roles as anti-materiel and anti-personnel. Interceptor drones are an option as well in this space, but drones have operational limitations in time to deploy, range, and bulk. Rockets offer an intercept capability with a faster response time than drones. When swarms come in, that speed matters in the ability to engage high numbers rapidly.
There is also a second reason to prefer rockets over interceptor drones: rockets are much harder to counter. The moment you field interceptor drones, you invite the enemy to field drones designed to intercept your interceptors, starting a spy-versus-spy arms race that can keep escalating. A rocket traveling at high speed closes the distance to its target in seconds, leaving almost no window for a counter-drone to respond. You cannot intercept something that is already on top of you. That speed asymmetry is what breaks the escalation loop and makes the semi-guided rocket a more durable solution than a drone-on-drone answer.
Currently the US has the Hydra 70 (FFAR), a 70mm unguided rocket with a cost of around $1,000 to $2,500, in service for 75 years and 40 years with the more updated motor. With the standard Mk 66 motor it reaches up to about 8 km when air-launched, though ground-launched range is considerably shorter. It is cheap, but too heavy and bulky to mount in high numbers on ground vehicles, and more importantly it has no guidance system, making it unsuitable as a counter-weapon system.
| System | Type | Cost per Unit (approx.) | Range | Guidance | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hydra 70 (FFAR) | 70mm unguided rocket | ~$1,000–$2,500 | Up to ~8 km (air-launched) | None | Most widely used US unguided rocket; baseline airframe cost |
| APKWS II | Laser-guided 70mm | ~$10,000–$28,000 | ~5–6 km | Laser semi-active | Retrofit guidance kit on Hydra 70 body; closest US analog to cheap precision |
| LOGIR | IR-guided 70mm | ~$15,000 | ~5 km | Infrared seeker | Limited procurement; IR seeker variant of Hydra 70 |
| GMLRS M31 | GPS-guided 227mm rocket | ~$100,000–$160,000 | ~65 km | GPS/INS | HIMARS/M270 rocket; most affordable US precision strike at range |
| GLSDB | Glide bomb + rocket hybrid | ~$40,000–$60,000 | ~150 km | GPS/INS | GBU-39 SDB + M26 rocket motor; commodity parts; closest proof of cheap standoff precision |
What is needed is something smaller than the Hydra 70. If you take the warhead down to a smaller size with an expanding rod casing and lower the overall range to 2.5 to 3 km, you could produce a rocket that is easier to mount in bulk launchers on vehicles. What is more important is the need to produce a guidance system purchased in bulk, in this case a simple laser-guided system. For maneuvering, the best option is the use of micro solid-fuel thrusters. Each one is a small one-shot explosion that allows the rocket to be maneuverable enough to function as an interceptor.
| Spec | S-5 (57mm) | Hydra 70 (70mm) | 45mm Concept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diameter | 57mm | 70mm | 45mm |
| Length | ~885mm | ~1,400mm | ~900–1,000mm |
| Weight | ~3.6–5 kg | ~4.5–5 kg | ~0.9–1.4 kg |
| Range | ~1.6–4 km | Up to ~8 km (air-launched) | ~2.5–4 km |
| Guidance | None | None (APKWS adds laser) | Laser semi-active + micro thrusters |
| Warhead | HE / HEAT / flechette | HE / HEAT / flechette / smoke | Expanding rod fragmentation |
| Kill radius (vs drone) | ~5–8m (area blast) | ~8–10m (area blast) | ~3–5m (precision fragmentation) |
| Rounds per vehicle launcher | ~20–32 | ~19 (standard pod) | ~50–80 |
| Cost per unit (approx.) | ~$500–$1,500 (unguided) | ~$1,000–$2,500 (unguided) | ~$1,000 (target) |
| Status | In service since 1950s | In service since 1950s | Concept |
If the rocket was designed around a 45mm diameter frame, it would sit in a new space for both rockets and semi-guided munitions. Most rockets start at 57mm and larger. The 40mm space has traditionally been the domain of grenades, which are now also being expanded into the anti-drone role. A 45mm guided rocket fills a gap that neither category covers.
Volume and weight drop fast at this scale. A 45mm diameter rocket body is roughly 26% of the Hydra's volume, which is why weight falls to around 0.9 to 1.4 kg per round. Range operates in the 2.5 to 3 km window. An expanding rod warhead gives a fragmentation pattern covering roughly 3 to 5 meters, which is more than enough to destroy an FPV or loitering munition. At 0.9 to 1.4 kg per round, a ground vehicle could realistically carry 50 to 80 rounds in a box launcher, which changes the math on sustained engagement against swarms entirely.
The real engineering challenge is the guidance section. Fitting laser guidance and micro thrusters into a 45mm body is tight but achievable with today's technology. The bigger benefit is what mass production unlocks. Producing these sensors and guidance systems in volume creates the investment case for a combined chip and housing design that could be adapted for use in other weapons as well, spreading the development cost across a larger program.
One of the harder truths about warfare is that we cannot fully predict how tactics will evolve. The enemy adapts, new technologies arrive, and the battlefield changes in ways that make yesterday's purpose-built solution obsolete. History keeps teaching the same lesson: simple weapons survive that cycle better than complex ones, because simplicity is what allows a platform to be repurposed when the threat changes.
The M72 LAW is a good example. It was designed as a lightweight anti-armor weapon, a one-shot disposable rocket tube a single soldier could carry. But in Vietnam, and later in Iraq and Afghanistan, it became something else entirely: a breaching tool for blowing through walls and clearing rooms. A new warhead was introduced but the weapon system itself stayed the same. What made that adaptation possible was the simplicity of the platform combined with the training, distribution, and logistics infrastructure already built around it. Soldiers knew how to use it, supply chains knew how to move it, and units knew how to ask for it. The weapon slotted into a new role because the whole system around it was already in place.
A $1,000 semi-guided rocket offers the same kind of durable simplicity. The core platform, the rocket, the launchers, and the guidance system can each be adapted as drone tactics change without reinventing the weapon. Launcher configurations can be set up to support multiple vehicles from small troop transports to warships. New warhead types can be introduced to the same rocket body. And because the rocket itself is cheap and simple, it can be manufactured and supplied at a scale that complex systems never allow. The logistics tail that supports ten thousand simple rockets is a completely different problem from the one that supports a hundred expensive missiles. In a high-intensity conflict, that difference decides whether a unit stays in the fight.
Drones are getting cheaper, more numerous, and harder to ignore. Today they operate in limited numbers, but that will not be true for long. The defense gap at 1.6 to 3 km is not a theoretical problem waiting to emerge. It is a real gap that exists today, on active battlefields, being exploited right now. The US needs to close that gap with a cheap, mass-producible semi-guided rocket. A new class of weapon like this does not just solve a logistics problem for dealing with swarms. It changes every calculation an adversary has to make before sending one.