Gulf States Need a Plan for Dealing with Iranian Drones. Here's How.

Crisis?

Even before the United States and Israel launched their aerial assault against the Iranian regime, the working assumption was that Tehran’s retaliation this time round would be far more substantial than previous battles in 2024 and 2025. As such, Gulf states have been making defensive preparations, mainly focused on the Iranian arsenal of ballistic missiles.

However, Tehran’s large arsenal of one-way attack (OWA) drones, centered around the infamous Shahed-136, has also been a known problem for some time. Even before the most-recent flare up, these drones had already been involved in a number of damaging strikes in the region, not to mention the carnage they (and their Russian derivatives) have unleashed across Ukraine.

So, the use of Iranian OWA drones against nearby targets shouldn't have been a surprise. Unfortunately for multiple countries in the region, Iranian drones have attacked not only US military targets, but also a much wider set of economic interests and even multiple cities across the region. This has stretched the air defenses of several Gulf states more than many expected.

Unlike the much more feared ballistic missiles, OWA drones are cheap and easy to build and can be launched without complex equipment. Their main downsides are the small size of the warhead, which limits the amount of damage each one can cause, and the fact that they are slow and somewhat unsophisticated - making it relatively easy for modern air defense systems to intercept. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, their sheer numbers make it near-impossible to expend expensive, hard-to-replace anti-aircraft missiles against them for a prolonged amount of time.

Many commentators have highlighted this extreme cost and availability difference and have questioned the capacity of some of the countries under attack to continue shooting down Iranian OWA drones without running out of missiles. There is also a desire to increase the percentage of downed Iranian drones due to the amount of direct damage and economic disruption that OWA drones cause when they impact urban or industrial areas.

As is always the case, solving the problem during the crisis will be much harder and more expensive than if the affected countries had properly prepared for the inevitability of Iranian drone attacks. Fortunately for them, the war in Ukraine has already shown ways to deal with the large numbers of OWA drones that Iran is likely to continue firing at its neighbors for the foreseeable future.

Bitter medicine

The first major obstacle will be the need for the countries involved to properly coordinate their efforts. Right now, the Gulf states are engaged in something of a free for all, which limits both the effectiveness of their defense and the use of some assets they have available. This is complicated by the intense rivalry between some of the affected countries, like Saudi Arabia and UAE.

The good news is that the US military is used to playing a role of coordinator between multiple military forces, and they have already deployed a significant amount of assets designed for enabling coordinated actions by systems that are not interconnected. The bad news is that actually achieving the necessary level of cooperation will require a lot of political will in these countries. And as the recent case in Kuwait has shown (where 3 American F-15s were shot down by accident), such a complex coordinated task as air defense - when done quickly - is likely to result in friendly fire accidents.

Combining solutions and building up defense in depth

There are many options for trying to deal with such an issue, although this piece will focus on defensive measures, since degrading the Iranian capacity to build and launch OWA drones will at-best take a significant amount of time, and may quite possibly never succeed in eliminating the threat. While the quantity of Iranian attacks can be expected to decline over time, it is unclear for how long US allies in the region will have to withstand these strikes and at what scale - meaning they need to prepare for pessimistic scenarios.

Still, it’s not all gloom and doom. Due to the wealth of the countries that are under attack, they will have some options that other nations might see as prohibitively expensive or just a flat-out waste of money, akin to responding to a flat tire by buying a whole new car. But if such an approach buys them enough time to either get a proper defensive system in place or for the war to end, they might consider it worth the cost.

Overall, though, we need to recognize that no single solution will solve this air defense dilemma, so a combination of short-term and long-term solutions will be needed.

Reserve assets

Among the affected countries, the UAE is notable for deployments of some of its air defense assets in various proxy conflicts in the wider region, most notably Libya and Sudan, where Emirati equipment is fueling the RSF’s ongoing war against the Sudanese military. Quickly returning those air defense systems and related missile stockpiles home would be a logical step.

All of the defending countries also have a number of old Cold War-era air defense systems. Some like autocannons might seem obsolete, and to some extent, they are - but OWA drones are also relatively easy targets, and old AA guns can often be a good enough last line of defense. They have the advantage of being cheap to use, with autocannon munitions being both cheap and common. Old SAM systems like the American Hawk can (if they can be reactivated quickly enough) seem wasteful by shooting missiles at the Iranian OWA drones, but they can buy defenders time by expending available missiles for these obsolete systems.

Repurposed equipment

There is a relatively large number of weapons platforms that would normally not be considered to be a part of modern air defense, but against OWA drones, can work as a “good enough” stand-in.

We’ve already seen some examples of this in Ukraine. The main relevant platforms are light military aircraft (training aircraft being especially suitable due to ease of weapons installation) and helicopters (both attack and transport models). They have sufficient range to patrol the Persian Gulf and are fast enough to intercept OWA drones - shooting them down with mounted machine guns. Such improvised air defense assets are already being deployed relatively effectively against OWA drones by both Ukraine and Russia, and the fact that there is no other urgent demand for these platforms makes them quite attractive as one possible temporary solution.

US support

The US military has deployed a large number of aircraft in the MENA region for its operations against Iran and more aircraft are on the way. Given that the fighting has been initiated by the USA (along with Israel) and the need to preserve good relations with countries that are now being targeted by Iran, it seems appropriate that these countries should now expect US support in dealing with the strikes against them.

The US military has, besides other assets, a significant amount (tens of thousands) of APKWS munitions. These are relatively new short-range rockets that have been specifically designed to cheaply shoot down targets like OWA drones. Due to their small size, they can be carried in much larger numbers than conventional air-to-air missiles, with each pod of APKWS containing 7 rockets. The US military could deploy more of its aircraft in the region to patrol duty with APKWS rockets to help out its allies with air defense against the numerous Iranian drones - alternatively, it could at least help arm some of the allied aircraft with these munitions. Some US aircraft in the region might already be doing this, but there is a lack of data about the scale, and the priority still appears to be strike missions against Iran.

Seeking external help

Given the financial resources of the GCC countries, one of the ways they have historically dealt with military challenges has been to pay other countries to come to their aid. The most relevant options that seem plausible are Pakistan and Egypt - both are friendly with GCC countries, both have large arsenals of air defense weapons of varying complexity and modernity, and both are desperate for cash.

So, it is entirely plausible that they would be willing to agree to a short-term deployment of whole air defense units with all the relevant munitions. This could help patch some holes in the air defense capabilities of the GCC countries and buy them time to develop more sustainable solutions.

Pakistan might be nervous about deploying too much of its modern air defenses due to tensions with India, but systems that are needed for countering OWA drones are mostly old and short-range - not suitable for peer conflicts. India, as a significant oil importer, would also benefit from the restoration of Persian Gulf oil exports, so it would have an incentive not to interfere with the Pakistani deployment.

Ukraine

An interesting option would be to seek support from Ukraine. While Ukraine can't spare a significant amount of troops or equipment, it has extensive experience dealing with Russian derivatives of Iranian Shahed OWA drones and, as a result, has developed multiple cost-effective systems for tracking and shooting down such drones.

Ukraine is especially notable for developing so-called interceptor drones, which are designed to cheaply destroy OWA drones and similar targets, while also being easy to manufacture in large numbers - with recent reporting indicating that Ukraine is now making around 1,000 drone interceptors per day, with each unit costing between $2,000 and $5,000. This could flip the script on Iran, since Shahed OWA drones currently benefit from “wasting” defensive missiles worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per shot (the AIM-9 missile costs $400+K, the AIM-120 AMRAAM is over $1M, while one Patriot PAC-2 GEM-T costs an eye-watering $4M). Drone interceptors could, in combination with other cheap means of interception, therefore help radically reduce the average cost of intercept.

Like Egypt or Pakistan, Ukraine is also relatively desperate for cash. Kyiv needs additional money to continue its defense against the Russian invasion, so it could make sense for its government to agree to provide its technology and even deploy drone teams with interceptors in return for fistfuls of dollars. If desired (and for an appropriate amount of money), local production of drone interceptors could also likely be established as a longer-term solution.

The main problem with this option is that it would mean a temporary reduction in Ukrainian air defense against Russian OWA drones - so Ukraine would have to be extremely well paid to compensate for this factor.

Alternatively, these countries can offer Ukraine some of their Patriot PAC-3MSE missiles that Ukraine desperately needs to protect against Russian ballistic missiles - but this would depend on how many Patriot missiles these countries would have remaining when the fight with Iran ends and how many of those they would be willing to transfer to Ukraine.

Conclusion

While the problem with air defense capacity against sustained attacks of Iranian OWA drones in the GCC countries is very real, it appears that they have multiple options for dealing with the problem - at least if the US military cooperates and if they, along with Israeli airpower, manage to reduce the rate of Iranian attacks over time.

We are already seeing Iranian ballistic missile attacks sharply declining due to the destruction of Iranian missiles and launchers. And while OWA drones are much easier to produce and launch, they are also much easier to shoot down by cheap air defense systems - so the main challenge will be to establish sufficiently effective and sustainable air defenses that Iranian OWA drones can no longer disrupt lives and economy in the GCC countries.

Resolving this problem won't be easy or cheap (unless the war ends very soon), but it appears to be something with which the affected countries are likely able to deal with. All it requires now is a little imagination and willingness to think outside the box.