For years, the U.S. military has faced an expensive and embarrassing math problem: adversaries can field swarms of drones that cost a few thousand dollars each, while the cheapest American missile capable of shooting one down runs well into six figures. The Air Force is now testing a workaround. Federal procurement records reviewed in May 2026 show the service has integrated the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, a laser-guided 2.75-inch rocket built by BAE Systems, onto the MQ-9 Reaper drone, giving it a counter-drone weapon that costs less than $40,000 per shot.
That is roughly one-fourth the price of a Hellfire missile and a tiny fraction of what a Patriot interceptor costs. In a threat environment shaped by the drone wars in Ukraine and Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, the pairing represents one of the Pentagon’s most concrete steps toward closing the so-called cost curve gap that has alarmed defense planners since at least 2022.
A ground-attack rocket gets a new job
APKWS was not originally designed to kill drones. The system works by snapping a mid-body laser-guidance kit onto the military’s ubiquitous unguided Hydra 70 rocket, turning a cheap, dumb munition into a precision one. BAE Systems has delivered more than 50,000 of the kits since the weapon entered service, primarily for close air support missions: destroying trucks, small boats, and fighting positions where a 500-pound bomb would be overkill and a Hellfire too expensive.
The counter-drone application exploits the same qualities that made APKWS attractive for those missions. The rocket is small, accurate, and cheap enough to fire at targets that do not justify a premium interceptor. A single MQ-9 wing station can carry a launcher pod loaded with multiple APKWS rounds, meaning one Reaper sortie could engage several hostile drones without burning through its heavier Hellfire or GBU-12 ordnance. For base defense or convoy protection, where a wave of expendable drones might try to saturate defenses, that magazine depth matters.
The MQ-9 itself, built by General Atomics, already operates from bases across the Middle East, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific. It carries an onboard laser designator capable of guiding APKWS to its target, and its long endurance (more than 27 hours aloft) means it can loiter over a defended area far longer than any manned fighter. Pairing a persistent airborne platform with a low-cost interceptor creates what defense analysts describe as a “roaming hunter” capability: a drone that hunts other drones.
What the procurement trail shows
The clearest public evidence for this effort sits in the Federal Procurement Data System, the government’s official ledger for defense contract actions. FPDS entries searchable through the U.S. General Services Administration’s open data portal show APKWS-related contract awards spanning multiple fiscal years, including modifications tied specifically to counter-unmanned aircraft systems integration on the MQ-9. The FPDS data dictionary defines the coding standards behind those entries, allowing independent verification of what the government has actually spent money on.
Early contract actions in the trail emphasize engineering support, integration testing, and platform certification, the hallmarks of a capability still in development. What has not yet appeared in the public record is a clearly labeled full-rate production buy for APKWS in a dedicated counter-drone configuration. That distinction matters. Integration contracts prove the Air Force is serious enough to spend real money. Production orders would prove it is ready to field the weapon at scale.
The per-round cost figure of less than $40,000 is widely cited in defense trade reporting and is consistent with BAE Systems’ published pricing for APKWS guidance kits, which have historically fallen in the $22,000 to $30,000 range depending on order volume and lot negotiations. The exact unit price for a counter-drone-configured round does not appear in publicly released FPDS reference materials, and costs can shift with production scale and guidance-kit upgrades.
Open questions about performance
Procurement records confirm spending and intent. They do not confirm that the weapon works against drones in combat. No primary Department of Defense source has published test results for APKWS fired from an MQ-9 against a live drone target, whether in a controlled test range or in theater. Defense trade outlets have described integration trials and captive-carry flights, but those accounts rely on unnamed officials and industry briefings rather than formal test reports.
The engineering challenge is real. APKWS was designed to hit slow or stationary ground targets. A small quadcopter traveling at 60 knots and executing evasive maneuvers is a fundamentally different problem. The rocket’s semi-active laser guidance requires a designator to hold a spot on the target throughout the flight, and that task gets harder as the target shrinks, speeds up, or moves against a cluttered background. Atmospheric interference and line-of-sight breaks add further complications. No published hit-rate data exists for APKWS in a counter-drone role, so any performance claims at this stage are extrapolations from ground-attack results.
There is also the question of how an APKWS-armed Reaper fits into the broader air-defense architecture. Using a medium-altitude drone to patrol for hostile unmanned aircraft requires coordination with ground-based radar, electronic warfare sensors, and existing air-defense networks. Whether the Reaper would operate as a last-ditch interceptor, a roaming hunter, or a supplement to ground-based systems has not been spelled out in any unclassified doctrine or concept-of-operations document.
The competition for cheap drone kills
APKWS on the Reaper is not the only answer the Pentagon is pursuing. The Army’s Coyote Block 3 expendable interceptor, designed specifically to kill small drones, has already been fielded in limited numbers. Several companies are developing interceptor drones that ram or net hostile aircraft for a few thousand dollars per engagement. And directed-energy programs, including high-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems, promise per-shot costs close to the price of diesel fuel once they reach operational maturity.
Each approach carries tradeoffs. Coyote is purpose-built but ground-launched and limited in range. Interceptor drones are cheap but lack the speed to chase faster targets. Laser systems need sustained power and struggle in rain, dust, and fog. APKWS on the Reaper offers something none of those alternatives currently provide: a weapon that can be carried by an aircraft already deployed worldwide, fired from standoff range, and guided with precision against a target the operator can see through the Reaper’s own sensor ball.
The tradeoff is that the MQ-9 itself is not cheap. At roughly $30 million per airframe, a Reaper flying counter-drone patrols is a high-value asset exposed to the same threat environment it is trying to police. In contested airspace where adversaries field capable air defenses, the Reaper’s survivability is already a concern, one reason the Air Force has been investing in the more autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft program as a longer-term replacement for some MQ-9 missions.
Where this stands in mid-2026
The documented facts are narrow but solid: the Air Force has spent money integrating APKWS onto the MQ-9 for counter-drone missions, the weapon costs a fraction of the alternatives, and the work has continued across multiple budget cycles. What is not yet documented in the public record is whether the system has been tested against realistic drone targets, how well it performs in that role, or when operational units will carry it into the field.
For anyone tracking the program, the next meaningful signal will come from the procurement record itself. A shift from integration and testing contracts to full-rate production orders would indicate the Air Force has moved past evaluation and committed to fielding the capability at scale. Budget justification documents submitted to Congress sometimes spell out munition quantities requested for specific mission sets and could provide additional clarity.
Until then, the APKWS-Reaper pairing sits at a familiar point in the defense acquisition timeline: funded enough to be taken seriously, but unproven enough to leave the most important questions unanswered. In a military scrambling to find affordable answers to the drone threat, that ambiguity has not stopped the checks from being written.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
