The US Army asked industry in early August for a Next Generation Counter-sUAS Missile that can kill Group 2 and Group 3 drones for less than $150,000 a round in a buy of at least 5,000. The notice wants more than 16 kilometres of reach at 6 kilometres of altitude, a shot off the rail in under five seconds, an all-weather radio-frequency seeker, and a fit on the existing Coyote launcher. Field assessment is aimed at late 2027 into early 2028. On a battlefield that is a bargain next to a Patriot. Next to the thing it is meant to hit, it is still a losing trade.
A Shahed-class one-way drone is commonly priced in the tens of thousands of dollars. Many Group 2 aircraft cost less than a used car. Fire four $150,000 missiles at a night of cheap airframes and the defender goes broke first. Coyote Block 2 already sits in that $100,000–$150,000 band. The Army is not inventing a new idea. It is admitting the current cheap missile is not cheap enough, and not fast or far enough, when the attacker can send the next wave before the magazine is refilled.
Cost-per-kill is the only number that matters once the first drone is overhead. A PAC-3 class interceptor can run into the millions. An AMRAAM on a ground launcher is about a million. An AIM-9 class round is still hundreds of thousands. APKWS, a guidance kit on a common 70-millimetre rocket, comes in roughly $20,000–$35,000 a shot and has been used against one-way drones. Interceptor drones fielded in Ukraine are cited around $15,000 and, for the first time in a widely used Western kit, can make the exchange ratio favour the defender. Directed energy is cheaper still at the trigger. A laser pulse is electricity, advertised in single-digit dollars per engagement and a high-power microwave burst can cover several airframes at once. Those figures omit the truck, the generator, the crew and the days the weather will not cooperate. They still show why a $150,000 missile is a middle layer, not a strategy.
Civilian airspace makes the middle layer harder. An airport, a container port, a city stadium or a power plant cannot treat every contact as a free-fire zone. Jamming can drop a hostile drone. It can also knock a lawful aircraft, a police helicopter or a hospital telemetry link off its frequency. In India, Vietnam and much of ASEAN the legal right to radiate, seize or destroy still sits across aviation, police, telecom and defence ministries. Tan Son Nhat’s 56-flight disruption showed the cost of seeing a drone and not being allowed to finish the job. A missile that explodes over a terminal is a lawsuit. A laser that dwells on a carbon-fibre airframe over a fuel farm is a fire risk. A microwave that fries the wrong receiver is an accident report. Kinetic intercept over water or a closed range is one problem. Kinetic intercept over Mumbai, Manila or Incheon is another.
Asia will not copy the Army’s notice line by line. It will copy the layering. Detect cheap and early. Jam where the law allows. Use a recoverable interceptor or a directed-energy burst against the swarm. Keep a missile for the Group 3 airframe that is high, fast and already committed. India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Gulf states are buying pieces of that stack. The country that writes the civilian rules first, who authorises the shot, who pays for the miss, who keeps the airport open, will spend less than the country that only buys the $150,000 round.
The Pentagon is not solving air defence. It is trying to stop air defence from becoming a procurement death spiral. A missile under $150,000 is progress. It is not cheap. Cheap is the drone.