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LONDON — <\/span>An American anti-drone system proven to work against Russian drones in Ukraine<\/a> will soon be sent to the Middle East to bolster U.S. defenses against Iranian drones, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Friday.<\/p>\n While the U.S. has used Patriot and THAAD missile systems to take down Iranian missiles<\/a> successfully, there are limited effective anti-drone defenses now in the Middle East, according to a U.S. defense official, one of two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.<\/p>\n The U.S. response to countering Iran’s Shahed drones has been \u201cdisappointing,\u201d the other U.S. official said, particularly because the drones fired by Iran are a much more basic version of the same drone that Russia is continuously refining and updating in its war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n The effort to bolster U.S. anti-drone capabilities in the Middle East underscores concerns about the planning for an Iranian retaliatory response<\/a> across the region to the American and Israeli strikes. Persian Gulf countries have complained they were not given adequate time<\/a> to prepare for the torrent of Iranian drones and missiles bombarding their territory.<\/p>\n The system that is being sent<\/a>, known as Merops, flies drones against drones. It is small enough to fit in the back of a midsize pickup truck, can identify drones and close in on them, using artificial intelligence to navigate when satellite and electronic communications are jammed.<\/p>\n Drones are hard to pinpoint on radar systems calibrated for spotting high-speed missiles and can be mistaken for birds or planes. The Merops system is designed to spot them and take them down. Crucially, the system also is cheaper than firing a missile that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars at a drone that costs less than $50,000.<\/p>\n The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said this week that \u201cwe\u2019re pretty good at taking missiles down. What is much more problematic for us is the huge inventory of Iranian drones, which are hard to detect and hard to take down.\u201d<\/p>\n Himes said the drone attacks present a \u201cmath problem\u201d in that the U.S. cannot keep relying on expensive military interceptors, like Patriot systems, to down the quickly and cheaply made Iranian drones.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really, really expensive to take down a cheap drone,\u201d he said. \u201cA giant missile going after a tiny little crappy drone.\u201d<\/p>\n Merops was deployed in NATO nations Poland and Romania in November<\/a> after Russian attack drones<\/a> repeatedly entered NATO airspace. The U.S. defense official says America has learned lessons from the deployment of the system and others like it in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that the U.S. asked for his country’s help<\/a> in combating Iran’s Shahed drones, which Russia has used in huge numbers in Ukraine. Zelenskyy did not specify the type of assistance Ukraine would provide, but the U.S. defense official said the Merops system is a part of it.<\/p>\n