{ "archive_path": "archive/1792015659.448284", "base_url": "www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days", "basename": "army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-14 22:07", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.twz.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days.html" }, "domain": "www.twz.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1DS4VAYA66RRCYDYJRMC", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.twz.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-14T22:16:42.584693+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792015659.448284", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-14T22:16:41.966485+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-14T22:16:43.162770+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792015659.448284", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-14T22:16:42.633387+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-14T22:17:09.655546+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792015659.448284", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-14T22:17:05.446856+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp2y9195xt", "https://www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-14T22:17:05.430162+00:00", "index_texts": [ "The U.S. Army turned the Merops interceptor drone into a formal program in just 142 days, an acquisition milestone that highlights efforts to speed the service\u2019s response to emerging threats and get combat-proven capabilities into the hands of troops and allies. The Merops soon won accolades for its role in defending against Iranian barrages of Shahed-136 one-way attack munitions in the Middle East.\n\n\n\nSpeaking at the Association of the U.S. Army\u2019s (AUSA) main annual convention in Washington, D.C., where TWZ is in attendance, Col. Christopher Hill, director of the Army\u2019s Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate (G-TEAD), described the Merops effort as \u201can example of how we can move fast when we need to.\u201d\n\n\n\nA Polish soldier packing the parachute for a Merops drone near Lipa, Poland, in November 2025. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Luis Garcia, 52d ADA Bde \n\n\n\nThe Merops is a small, relatively low-cost counter-UAS system designed to rapidly intercept long-range, one-way attack drones in flight. It was originally developed under the U.S.-backed Project Eagle initiative, with contributions from Swift Beat, a company associated with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The system uses Surveyor drones as airborne interceptors, with onboard sensors to track targets and the ability to operate autonomously or under remote control. The interceptors can destroy enemy unmanned aircraft through direct impact or a proximity-detonated explosive warhead.\n\n\n\nThe interceptor was initially brought to the Army\u2019s attention after drone incursions involving two NATO partners prompted a senior commander to demand an urgent response. The system was not part of the commander\u2019s original acquisition plan, Hill explained, but its demonstrated performance in Ukraine made it a compelling candidate.\n\n\n\n\u201cHe said, \u2018I want this capability in the hands of our partners within 14 days,\u2019\u201d Hill recalled. \u201cEveryone looked around the room, and he looked over at me, and I nodded my head like, \u2018We\u2019ll figure it out.\u2019\u201d\n\n\n\nThe Army did not quite meet that deadline. Hill said acquisition personnel and soldiers went into the theater to evaluate the capability, ultimately getting it into the hands of NATO partners within approximately 21 or 22 days.\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\tA new system to identify and take down Russian drones is deployed to NATO\u2019s eastern flank\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\nThat initial effort has since expanded. Hill said the Army procured additional Merops systems in partnership with the Joint Interagency Task Force, which procured 13,000 of the interceptors. The effort also progressed from providing the capability to NATO partners to supplying mobile Merops firing teams to a second theater \u2014 presumably U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).\n\n\n\nIn CENTCOM, the U.S. military has been confronting the threat posed by Iran\u2019s Shahed-136 and other one-way attack drones, which have been used in barrages against American and allied forces and installations in the Middle East. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll has previously highlighted Merops as a particularly attractive option for countering such threats because of its relatively low cost and the speed with which it can be acquired.\n\n\n\nYou can watch Driscoll\u2019s testimony on Merops at the 36-minute mark of the video below:\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBudget Hearing \u2013 The United States Army\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\nDuring congressional testimony, Driscoll said the Army was able to purchase 13,000 Merops interceptors within approximately eight days after the conflict with Iran began. He put the cost at about $15,000 per interceptor, with the potential for that figure to fall below $10,000 as production scales. In a separate interview with Bloomberg, he suggested larger orders could eventually push the price down to between $3,000 and $5,000.\n\n\n\nU.S. Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll poses for a photo after signing a Merops counter-unmanned aerial system in Ansbach, Germany. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Jacob Kohrs \n\n\n\nShahed drones have been estimated to cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece, while traditional air defense interceptors are far more expensive. Using comparatively inexpensive drones to defeat them can improve the economics of air defense while preserving more sophisticated interceptors for threats that require them.\n\n\n\nUkraine has employed Merops alongside domestically produced interceptor drones to counter Russian Shahed/Geran one-way attack drones. The system\u2019s battlefield use has helped demonstrate the potential of a new class of air defense weapons designed to defeat these kinds of drones without relying exclusively on costly surface-to-air missiles.\n\n\n\nThe thermal infrared targeting system of a Merops displays a green target lock box milliseconds before intercepting a Hornet mid-range strike drone during a Perennial Autonomy drone demonstration for 2nd Marine Division on Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, July 28, 2026. U.S. Marine Corps/Courtesy photo illustration \n\n\n\nHowever, Hill cautioned that success in Ukraine does not automatically mean a system will perform equally well in every operational environment.\n\n\n\n\u201cOn the Merops, it absolutely was influenced by [Ukraine]. I mean, that\u2019s where it came from. That\u2019s where we saw the capability,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that\u2019s one of the things where the employment of the system really matters.\u201d\n\n\n\nA Merops drone is prepared for flight during a Perennial Autonomy drone demo on Range 220 as part of Service Level Training Exercise 4-26 on Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, July 28, 2026. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Carla Perez Ramirez \n\n\n\nHill noted that the system\u2019s effectiveness will vary depending on where it is used, including differences between desert environments and the urban areas where it has operated in Ukraine. The objective, he said, is to get the capability into the Army\u2019s inventory so commanders can make informed decisions about how and where to use it.\n\n\n\n\u201cOnce we get it into our hands, now we can make a decision in Europe. Where does it go? Do I even need it?\u201d Hill said. \u201cIt\u2019s getting it in our hands. So that was the key for the Merops. The speed of getting it, then we can make the decision of how we employ it.\u201d\n\n\n\nThat approach reflects a broader change in how the Army wants to manage emerging technology. Rapid fielding is important, but the service also wants to avoid acquiring a capability for an urgent operational need only to leave it without a clear path toward long-term funding, production, and support.\n\n\n\nHill said G-TEAD\u2019s process is designed to involve the organizations that will eventually take responsibility for a capability from the outset. Program acquisition executives, or PAEs, are involved early, while the Army\u2019s test and evaluation community and soldiers provide feedback as the system is assessed. The goal is to identify a transition partner upfront rather than wait until after an initial fielding effort to determine who will take ownership.\n\n\n\nA U.S. Army soldier carries a component of the Merops counter-drone system during a live-fire demonstration at the Deba training grounds in Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland, on November 18, 2025. Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto \n\n\n\n\u201cWe want to make sure that we\u2019re giving commanders capability that we know works,\u201d Hill said.\n\n\n\nHe described the directorate\u2019s standard process as a 180-day effort, with the objective of reaching a decision on whether a capability should become an Army program within that period. The Merops effort, at 142 days, moved faster than that target.\n\n\n\nThe process is also intended to address what acquisition officials often call the \u2018valley of death\u2019: the gap between getting an emerging capability into the hands of operational units and the point at which a program office takes over and provides the funding and contracting structure needed to scale it.\n\n\n\n\u201cWe will work to fill that valley of death gap between the time that we put capability into the hands of units and the time that the PM picks it up and actually [provides funding],\u201d Hill said. \u201cThere\u2019s a gap there. So we can do that intermediate scaling portion before it fully transitions.\u201d\n\n\n\nA U.S. Army soldier launches an interceptor drone, part of the Merops counter-drone system, during a live-fire demonstration at the Deba training grounds in Poland. Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images \n\n\n\nThe effort builds on the Army\u2019s wider push to streamline acquisition, an issue Driscoll has also emphasized. The Army secretary previously described an old process involving 16 decision-making steps, each with the ability to veto a proposal and send it back through the system. That structure could leave the service waiting two to seven years to purchase a capability.\n\n\n\nThe Merops experience suggests that some of those delays can be reduced when acquisition professionals work directly with operational units and the organizations responsible for evaluating and sustaining new equipment.\n\n\n\nBut rapidly acquiring an interceptor is only part of the challenge. The Army must still determine where it offers the greatest value, how it fits into existing air defense architectures, and how to produce and sustain enough systems to meet operational demand.\n\n\n\nLow-cost interceptors are also not a replacement for every layer of air defense. They are, however, an increasingly important option against large numbers of relatively inexpensive attack drones, particularly when the alternative is expending missiles worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to defeat each target.\n\n\n\nFor the Army, Merops is therefore serving two purposes: providing an additional tool against the growing one-way attack drone threat and demonstrating a faster route from an emerging battlefield capability to a formally supported military program.\n\n\n\nContact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792015659.448284", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-14T22:17:03.456134+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-14T22:17:03.448438+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Army Explains How Merops Interceptor Drone Became Program Of Record In Just 142 Days", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792015659.448284", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-14T22:17:03.402986+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-10-14T22:17:03.393286+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792015659.448284", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-14T22:16:43.171946+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Army Explains How Merops Interceptor Drone Became Program Of Record In Just 142 Days", "warc": null, "wget": "www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1792015659.448284", "newest_archive_date": "2026-10-14T22:17:05.446856+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-10-14T22:16:41.966485+00:00", "path": "/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "d5b906ca-d9b6-46ce-945a-3c07e44a12c9", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1792015659-import.txt" ], "tags": ",pool,war_movement,war-wiki", "tags_str": "pool,war_movement,war-wiki", "timestamp": "1792015659.448284", "title": "Army Explains How Merops Interceptor Drone Became Program Of Record In Just 142 Days", "updated": "2026-10-14T22:16:41.966294+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-10-14 22:16", "url": "https://www.twz.com/news-features/army-explains-how-merops-interceptor-drone-became-program-of-record-in-just-142-days" }