Los cohetes guiados por Láser como el APKWS II de 70mm, originalmente concebidos para el ataque Aire – Superficie, se han convertido en una pequeña y económica herramienta apta para neutralizar drones de todo tipo. La US Air Force está incorporando en aeronaves como el F- 15, F-16 y helicópteros AH- 64 Apache, módulos lanzadores capaces de disparar salvas de APKWS contra los UAS, cada vez más presentes en escenarios de guerra. De esta manera, se preservan los muy escasos misiles de alto valor, incrementando las capacidades de las aeronaves con cohetes guiados interceptores de bajo costo. Los que además, pueden producirse en grandes cantidades en la Base Industrial de Defensa existente. El ejemplo de los APKWS II es una muestra de la forma en que están evolucionando muchos conceptos del empleo de los medios de Def Ae.
The air war in the Middle East is being quietly re-armed with inexpensive precision. Over the past year, laser-guided 70mm APKWS II rockets — originally designed to turn unguided rockets into pinpoint air-to-surface weapons — have emerged as the US Air Force’s workhorse against small, inexpensive aerial threats. What began as a field expedient is now established doctrine: fighters and attack aircraft are routinely equipped with salvoes of guided rockets to counter drone swarms and slow cruise missiles.
The rationale is straightforward. High-end air-to-air missiles are costly and limited in number. An AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) can cost around a million dollars; and the AIM-9X Sidewinder several hundred thousand. By contrast, the APKWS II guidance section costs only in the mid-five figures — commonly reported at $15,000–$20,000, with some estimates up to $35,000 — and the complete 70 mm round (guidance plus motor and warhead) adds only a few thousand dollars more. This converts an unguided rocket into an inexpensive precision intercept. In skies increasingly saturated with loitering munitions and small UAVs, the cost-exchange decisively favors defenders who can unleash many accurate shots instead of a handful of million-dollar interceptors.
Operational Impact
First deployed on F-16s, APKWS II later expanded to F-15Es, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, and AH-64 Apaches. While UH-60 and MH-60 variants tested the system for precision strikes over a decade ago, modern integration continues to focus on fixed-wing and attack helicopter platforms. Fired from seven-shot pods that can be stacked on a single pylon, the rockets give platforms like the Strike Eagle the ability to carry dozens of rounds while preserving stations for other missiles. This loadout flexibility enables a single sortie to handle both conventional air combat and mass UAV defense, reducing reliance on scarce, high-value interceptors.
Tactically, APKWS II fills a dangerous capability gap. During the April 2024 Iranian barrage against Israel — when fighters reportedly depleted missile stocks chasing waves of drones — commanders faced a stark dilemma: risk exhausting high-value missiles or attempt improvised strikes with bombs poorly suited to agile aerial targets. Laser-guided rockets provided an intermediate option: precision against small, maneuvering targets at a fraction of the cost, with deeper magazines and simpler logistics.
Yet APKWS II is no panacea. Its laser guidance requires line-of-sight or an external designator, complicating engagements at range or in degraded weather. Development efforts — including dual-mode seekers with infrared sensors — aim to expand engagement envelopes and reduce reliance on forward designators. Even with such upgrades, rockets remain inherently short-range. Traditional missiles and networked sensor architectures will remain essential for countering contested, beyond-visual-range (BVR) threats.
Strategic Implications
APKWS II’s success accelerates a broader democratization of air defense: relatively low-cost, precision-guided munitions make layered, distributed defensive architectures more feasible for allies and partners. This carries significant export and interoperability consequences. Navies and air arms observing US practice — with several allied platforms already considered for integration — are surely going to follow suit, raising the defensive baseline across coalitions while simultaneously altering adversarial threat calculations.
Industrially, the shift benefits agile suppliers and sensor–seeker firms as much as rocket-motor manufacturers. Upgrades such as proximity fuses, refined guidance algorithms, and infrared seekers will be critical in transforming a short-range expedient into a robust, reliable air-to-air capability. For the U.S. and its partners, scaling production and integrating these systems across platforms will be the next test of operationalizing the concept.
Rules of engagement and legal doctrines will also require recalibration. Employing air-to-ground munitions in an air-to-air role raises questions of ordnance certification, collateral planning, and safe employment — particularly in congested airspaces where civil aviation and non-combatant infrastructure are present. Training regimes, command-and-control structures, and integration with wider air-defense networks must evolve in parallel.
The APKWS phenomenon underscores a broader lesson from recent conflicts: asymmetric aerial threats demand creative adaptation. As adversaries proliferate cheap, disruptive tools, defenders must either expend costly interceptors or innovate with more affordable counters. APKWS II exemplifies the latter — an economical, rapidly fielded solution that reshapes operational calculus and buys time for more systemic advances, from enhanced sensors to layered interceptors and resilient networks.
Global Counter-Drone Efforts
This trend is far from unique to the United States Air Force. Across multiple theatres, militaries — and increasingly, civilian operators — are improvising or repurposing technology to meet the rising challenges posed by drone warfare.
Military Examples
- Ukraine’s air defenses: jury-rigged systems combining Cold War–era radar, anti-aircraft guns, and repurposed missiles to counter Iranian-made Shahed drones.
- Ukraine’s electronic warfare: jamming GPS and command links to neutralize drones mid-flight, bypassing kinetic interceptors altogether.
- Israel’s Iron Dome: initially designed for rockets, now adapted to intercept small UAVs at short range.
- Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states: frequently forced to fire $3 million Patriot interceptors against $20,000 Houthi drones — a striking illustration of cost asymmetry.
- US Navy shipboard lasers: deployed experimentally to disable drones at a fraction of missile costs, with the added benefit of deep magazines.
- India’s anti-drone doctrine: devised after the 2021 Jammu air base attack, combining jamming, small arms, and indigenous laser prototypes.
- China’s counter-drone batteries: integrating radar, electronic warfare, and low-cost missiles into layered defenses, now marketed to foreign buyers.
Civilian Applications
- Airports: Major hubs like London’s Gatwick and Heathrow have rolled out counter-drone radars, jammers, and capture systems after repeated shutdowns from rogue UAVs. What began as ad hoc fixes a few years ago is now becoming standard practice. Similar systems are being tested at Amsterdam Schiphol, Dubai International, and several large US airports.
- Sports stadiums and large venues: From NFL and NBA arenas in the U.S. to major concerts and football finals abroad, venues are deploying anti-drone surveillance, nets, and geofencing to block UAVs carrying cameras, banners, or hazardous payloads — lessons driven home by the 2023 Champions League final and a Green Day show in 2024.
- Energy and critical infrastructure: French nuclear plants, US refineries, and European power grids have invested in drone-detection and interdiction systems to guard against espionage, sabotage, or accidental intrusion. Recent cases highlight the scale of these efforts: Estonia’s grid operator Elering is spending €200 million on drone countermeasures for substations and transmission lines; Ukraine has secured €86 million from the European Investment Bank to build anti-drone shelters for its grid; and Électricité de France (EDF) has investigated repeated drone overflights of nuclear plants that occurred in 2014, prompting further protective upgrades.
- Urban policing and public events: Law enforcement in cities such as New York, Tokyo, and London are experimenting with nets, interceptors, and electronic jamming during high-security events, festivals, and government operations.
- Commercial aviation and airspace management: The FAA and EASA are testing systems to integrate drones safely into controlled airspace, using technologies such as Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), remote identification, and geofencing to balance innovation with security.
- Ports and maritime facilities: Some seaports and naval bases, including Rotterdam and Singapore, have begun testing counter-UAV technologies to protect shipping lanes, cargo operations, and sensitive naval assets.
Cheap guided rockets will not supplant high-end missiles, but they are reshaping the mission set of tactical aircraft and offering a scalable, cost-effective tool against the drone threat. Their growing role signals a doctrinal shift: precision is no longer the exclusive domain of million-dollar munitions but can be delivered in volume at a fraction of the cost. This democratization of air defense is likely to ripple outward, influencing procurement choices, alliance structures, and adversarial swarm strategies.
What lies ahead is less about any single weapon system than the balance between cost, adaptability, and resilience. Should adversaries continue to flood the skies with cheap, expendable drones, the decisive edge may rest not with the side wielding the most sophisticated missiles, but with the one that innovates most rapidly and spends most wisely. The APKWS story is thus only one chapter in a broader evolution of air defense — a reminder that military advantage in the drone age is measured as much in fiscal prudence and ingenuity as in range and lethality.
The pressing question, then, is whether militaries and civilian sectors alike can scale such adaptations quickly enough — before drone technology itself advances further and again transforms the cost equation.
