Britain’s Royal Navy confirmed that it would deploy new anti-drone laser weapons on its ships from next year.

The DragonFire system can target 400 mph drones and, while the weapon itself costs around $200 million, each shot is only $13, compared to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a high-tech interceptor missile. The deployment is five years ahead of schedule, evidence of a global scramble for cost-effective means of destroying cheap drones.

The US Army is experimenting with electromagnetic pulse weapons that can fry the electronics of drone swarms, while Ukraine has developed hand-launched anti-drone drones that cost around $2,000 per unit and have so far destroyed around 4,000 deadly Shahed projectiles.