Six Countries Pursue $15,000 Merops Interceptors to Cut Drone-Defense Costs

At least six countries have bought or are pursuing the American-made Merops counter-drone system, according to an unnamed U.S. defense official. The immediate attraction is easy to understand: each interceptor costs $15,000, offering NATO members a less expensive option than routinely sending crewed fighters armed with premium air-to-air missiles after comparatively cheap drones.

The expansion is notable because only three NATO countries were reported to operate Merops in November 2025. Most of the current or prospective users are said to be on NATO’s eastern flank, although the full list has not been disclosed and the official did not separate completed purchases from acquisitions still underway. Poland and Romania are confirmed operators, while Lithuania announced plans in April to buy a test batch.

Merops, built by U.S. company Perennial Autonomy, packages a radar, launcher, ground-control station and interceptor into one counter-drone system. The interceptor can exceed 175 mph and uses artificial intelligence to navigate in environments affected by electronic warfare. The manufacturer’s system has reportedly intercepted thousands of Russian drones in Ukraine, but that operational total remains an attributed claim rather than an independently detailed public accounting.

The $15,000 figure is the central comparison, but it should not be mistaken for the full cost of protection. An interceptor is only the final physical response in a chain that must first detect an object, determine what it is, track it reliably and authorize an engagement. Those earlier functions require radars, cameras, other sensors, communications and command systems plus trained crews and maintenance support.

That distinction matters for public cost and readiness. A fighter sortie consumes aircraft availability, pilot time, fuel, maintenance capacity and potentially an expensive missile. Using that combination against a low-cost drone may be necessary when no suitable alternative is available, but repeated use creates an unfavorable exchange and reserves scarce high-end defenses for a relatively modest target.

Merops changes the price of the last step. It does not eliminate the cost of the detection and decision network around that step. The interceptor’s price also cannot by itself establish the cost of a successful engagement: procurement quantities, launchers, sensors, support, training, spare parts and the number of interceptors used all affect the operational total.

This is why the system fits more naturally beneath fighters and larger air-defense weapons than in place of them. A lower-cost interceptor can handle targets within its supported operating envelope, allowing high-end aircraft and missiles to remain available for threats that demand their speed, range, sensors or payload. If the cheaper layer cannot detect, classify or reach a particular object, the more capable layer still has to respond.

Latvia’s broader border-defense plan illustrates the same policy logic. Its defense minister has described an automated anti-drone barrier intended to make NATO fighters a secondary response rather than the first. That approach does not reject crewed aviation; it changes where aircraft sit in the defensive sequence. Jets become the backstop after distributed sensors and lower-cost systems have had the first opportunity to manage an incursion.

The hard integration problem is interoperability. Eastern-flank countries are buying counter-drone equipment from multiple suppliers, and a sensor that detects a small aircraft is useful only if it can pass timely, accurate information to the appropriate control and interception system. A Belfer Center analysis of Europe’s drone-defense initiative warns that detection architecture and incompatible systems could become binding constraints even as governments fund more effectors.

That makes procurement scale as important as procurement count. Six countries pursuing Merops does not necessarily mean six identical networks, common interfaces or shared operating procedures. National systems must also coexist with civilian aviation, friendly military aircraft and NATO air-policing operations. Reliable identification and controlled authorization remain essential because a low interceptor price does not reduce the consequences of engaging the wrong object.

Industrial capacity is another boundary. A modest unit price supports larger inventories, but only if production can supply interceptors, launch equipment and replacement components at the required rate. It also shifts the sustainment question from preserving a small number of expensive missiles to manufacturing and managing larger quantities of cheaper expendable vehicles. That is a different supply-chain problem, not the absence of one.

The U.S. Army has also deployed Merops in the Middle East, and U.S. personnel have used it to destroy at least one Iranian drone there. Together with its reported Ukrainian record, that use gives buyers operational experience to examine. Yet performance across one environment does not automatically settle reliability, integration or certification requirements elsewhere.

Lt. Col. Adam Scher, a spokesperson for Joint Interagency Task Force 401, summarized the constraint plainly: “There is no silver bullet.” Merops may improve the economics of interception, but its larger value will depend on whether buyers connect those $15,000 interceptors to the sensors, command systems and complementary defenses that make a layered network work.

By Stephen Wallace — Editor for AMI’s aerospace integration and unmanned mobility coverage, focused on drone manufacturing, VTOL systems, autonomous networks, and air-ground mobility links.