A photograph taken on April 28, 2026 shows a French Air and Space Force Rafale jet plane at the Air Base 115 in Orange, in southeastern France. Bound by defence agreements with Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, France has made its fighter jets, deployed in the UAE and Jordan, available to these countries targeted by Tehran's reprisals; these were quickly reinforced by at least six additional aircraft. In total, French Rafale jets have carried out 360 missions to date, and Fennec helicopters around 30. (Photo by Sylvain THOMAS / AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

The Iran war has shown France and several other countries how their air forces must adapt to using cheaper air-to-air munitions in large quantities for confronting cheap enemy drones used in mass attacks.

Fighter jets have recently become a common sound over Iraqi Kurdistan, which endured more than 800 missile and drone attacks during the Iran war and the weeks since the ceasefire. The autonomous region lacks its own air defense and cannot independently buy any since it’s not a sovereign country. To add insult to injury, Baghdad is presently buying anti-drone systems but will not share any of them with Kurdistan.

For protection, Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil, has relied on allied ground-based air defense, primarily American Raytheon Coyotes and British Rapid Sentry systems, which intercepted the overwhelming majority of the incoming Iranian and Iraqi militia drones throughout the war. Iran has continued to repeatedly strike Iranian Kurdish dissident groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan since the April 8 ceasefire halted hostilities throughout the rest of the region.

During this post-ceasefire period, footage published on social media showed fighter jets intercepting these drones at close range outside Erbil city, possibly beyond the range of the capital’s ground-based air defenses. Some of these appear to be French Rafales, most likely firing their MICA short-to-medium-range air-to-air missiles to bring down Shahed-type drones.

French involvement in the air defense of Iraqi Kurdistan shouldn’t come as a surprise. Aside from being a member of the U.S.-led coalition that helped Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces combat the Islamic State group, Paris and Erbil have had warm relations for decades. France even named a street in Paris in honor of the Peshmerga in 2025. One of the few foreign casualties in Erbil during the Iranian and militia bombardments of Erbil was a French soldier deployed there as part of the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition.

While France’s MICA missiles are effective against Iran’s infamous one-way Shahed drones, they are an extremely costly solution, and France has already expended large numbers throughout the war.

France’s La Tribune, a weekly financial newspaper, reported that French Rafales fired more than 80 MICA missiles in total, primarily in defense of the United Arab Emirates, during the war. France deployed 12 Rafales to help the Emiratis bolster their sophisticated air defenses, each of them carrying a standard load-out of four to six MICAs. The newspaper noted that MICAs typically cost between 600,000 and 700,000 euros each, approximately $700,000 to $820,000. The Shaheds they brought down cost between $35,000 and $50,000 per unit. It’s worth noting that the MICA is the cheaper missile these Rafales use; the longer-range Meteor costs roughly 2 million euros, or $2.2 million, each.

Relying on high-performance jets like the Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon against such cheap drones was never going to be sustainable. Aside from the missiles being more expensive than the drones, merely fueling up such high-performance jets for combat air patrols can cost more than building and deploying these drones.

The La Tribune report notes that France is relying on MICAs for now “while awaiting the arrival of credible alternative solutions.” Just over a week after the ceasefire, Janes reported that France has modified the software on the Rafale’s internal 30 mm Giat DEFA 91B cannon. It described the move “as part of a wider raft of measures to enhance the armed forces’ counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) capabilities.” The modification is aimed at engaging Shahed-type drones, particularly at close range, reducing the need to expend those expensive MICAs in future engagements, which are most likely inevitable, whether over the Middle East or Europe.

The measure echoes the U.S. adaptation of the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, a relatively simple but arguably game-changing conversion of unguided Hydra rockets into laser-guided anti-drone precision munitions. Consequently, instead of engaging Shahed drones with AIM-9X missiles, which cost approximately $400,000 each, or AIM-120s that cost more than $1 million, the U.S. and allies can fire $22,000 APKWS rockets.

In addition to freeing up and saving more of these higher-end missiles for other engagements, the smaller size of APKWS munitions enables fighter jets to carry them in much greater numbers. That’s another game-changing aspect of these cheaper munitions. As recently as April 13, 2024, when American, British, and French fighter jets rushed to bolster Israel’s defense against an incoming Iranian drone and missile barrage, some of these jets expended all of their air-to-air missiles. U.S. Air Force F-15s attempted to bring down drones in other ways, from using internal cannons to even attempting to destroy one drone by dropping a guided bomb on top of it. Both risky attempts failed.

Subsequent adaptation of the APKWS since Iran’s first direct attack targeting Israel meant that the U.S. was already much better prepared for cost-effectively combating cheap Iranian drones in large numbers on the eve of the Iran war, less than two years later. Its allies are also following suit, especially since this latest war once again demonstrated the difficulty and high cost of effectively intercepting these cheap drones.

Saudi Arabia had already faced harsh lessons during its war with the Houthis in Yemen between 2015 and 2022. As that war dragged on, the Houthis became more capable of launching drones and missiles deeper into the kingdom. Riyadh was forced to use its multi-million-dollar apiece AIM-120s and ground-based MIM-104 Patriots against them. It was no surprise that after the war ended in a ceasefire, it ordered large numbers of these missiles to replenish its strategic stockpiles. However, it has simultaneously sought cheaper options for such a conflict in the future. In a move that appears pioneering in retrospect, the kingdom became the first in the region to order 2,000 APKWS for $100 million in March 2025.

In the aftermath of the Iran war, more regional countries than ever understand and appreciate the value of the APKWS. On Friday, the State Department Defense Security Cooperation Agency published several press releases underscoring the unprecedented demand for these cost-effective anti-drone munitions. Israel wants 10,000 at an estimated cost of $992.4 million. Qatar also wants the same number for the same price. And the United Arab Emirates wants a more modest 1,500 for $147.6 million.

All three of these Middle East states operate advanced 4.5-generation variants of American-made F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, which can certainly utilize these munitions effectively against drones. Given its ordeal as the country subjected to the most drone attacks by Iran, the UAE will presumably want France to modify those 80 Rafale F4s it has on order to engage Shaheds more effectively with its cannon rather than relying on costly MICAs for that essential task.

Wars against opponents like Iran, utilizing asymmetrical and attritional strategies such as deploying cheap drones and munitions in the thousands to tens of thousands, necessitate cheaper and more plentiful interceptors as effective countermeasures. The U.S. understands this, and now the Middle East clearly understands this more than ever. France’s Rafale modification and its combat experience in the same war indicate that Western Europe has also awoken to this inescapable reality.