• The US Army is applying lessons from Ukraine and Iran to better prepare its air defenders.
• Forward-deployed air defense units are bringing back lessons from combat.
• Combat simulations are evolving to reflect new battlefield threats and tactics.

Intense missile and drone attacks in global conflicts are showing the US Army how it needs to train its air defenders, as well as how to protect them from threats, Army officials said.

Lessons on protecting MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile systems and crews are coming in, and Army leaders say those observations are being quickly incorporated into training to help troops keep pace with evolving threats and tactics.

In their war against Ukraine, Russian forces have hunted Patriot batteries and other air-defense systems while also trying to overwhelm them with complex barrages of one-way attack drones alongside ballistic and cruise missiles, providing lessons in mobility, concealment, deception, and dispersal. The war with Iran, meanwhile, has exposed American and allied air defenders to the challenge of defending against large-scale drone and missile bombardments while managing interceptor stocks. The Army is learning those lessons, officials say.

Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, the head of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told reporters at the Association of the United States Army conference last week that air defenders have been "probably the most aggressive community in the Army for learning lessons from Ukraine," with an emphasis on survivability and the protection of critical assets.

"How have we embraced those observations from Ukraine and then put them into action?" Rafferty said this was one of the first questions he asked when he took command earlier this year.

He said that he has seen how command teams have "put those lessons in place and how they are taking steps to protect their soldiers, to protect the critical systems of Patriots and sensors, protection, camouflage, deception, all of that."

Officials with the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command told Business Insider that observations and lessons from Ukraine are shared with its headquarters at Fort Bliss, Texas, where training materials for air defense soldiers are updated. The information is also shared with the larger Army and industry partners.

The 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command recently transferred to Army Space and Missile Defense Command and is tasked with missile defense planning across different regions. Its responsibilities include both active defenses, such as intercepting incoming missiles, and passive measures, such as camouflage and dispersal, as well as coordinating intelligence and command-and-control.

Rafferty and other officials said that the US war with Iran, which has stress-tested American air defense units, is providing valuable data on air defense. According to Rafferty, roughly 2,500 soldiers from his command are deployed to the Middle East, including both air defense formations and space specialists.

He said that roughly 25% to 30% of the command's air defense formations are deployed. These forces consist primarily of Patriot units and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile defense crews.

"We're taking the things that we're seeing in the Middle East and feeding it back to the other brigades in the formation," Col. Matthew Ingils, deputy commanding officer for operations with the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said.

Lessons include "the types of threats" as well as "the scale, the scope, the complexity of what we're seeing," and then training new formations on that insight so that individual soldiers who join an air defense unit can quickly catch up.

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East present different challenges, giving the Army a broader range of lessons to incorporate into its training.

To prepare to counter new threats or employ new tactics, soldiers use combat simulations that are being updated with lessons from the Middle East and Ukraine.

Current conflicts have shown the Army and broader US military that air defenses are essential for intercepting missiles and drones, protecting critical assets, and challenging aircraft.

Heavy expenditure of air-defense interceptors and other munitions, however, have raised concerns about whether the US is sufficiently stocked for future fights.

At the same time, air defenders themselves have become priority targets for enemy forces, making dispersal, camouflage, and mobility increasingly important to their survival.

• Ukraine is funding air defense missiles with a hard cap of $20,000 per shot, Brave1's chief said.
• That's about a sixth the cost of a Stinger missile, and still cheaper than an APWKS 70mm rocket.
• It's one of Kyiv's responses to Russia's thousands-strong, inexpensive Shahed fleets.

Ukraine has been running a yearslong weapons program to develop cheap surface-to-air missiles that cost no more than $20,000 each, said Andrii Hrytseniuk, the head of its Brave1 startup incubator.

Several firms have been testing prototypes under this framework, and Kyiv is "preparing to put two of these companies into combat," Hrytseniuk said in a video interview published with Ukrainska Pravda on Thursday.

He expressed hope that a third would soon reach a similar stage.

Hrytseniuk said some of these manufacturers have managed to get costs down to $10,000 per missile, though the program has set a hard price cap of $20,000 per shot.

"This is significantly cheaper than the cost of a Shahed. Even if you need two or three missiles, it is still several times cheaper than the cost of a Shahed," said Hrytseniuk of the limit.

Hrytseniuk said the program was launched by Brave1 as a competition between Ukrainian firms to "create the cheapest anti-aircraft missile systems possible."

"Funding for missiles began in 2024, but making a missile takes even more time than making an interceptor drone," he added.

A price limit of $20,000 would make these Ukrainian missiles even cheaper than the AGR-Falco Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, an American-made unguided 70mm rocket fitted with a laser guidance kit.

Costing about $30,000 to $35,000 each, these were traditionally air-to-ground rockets that have now been converted for air defense in Ukraine. The cheapest US standard surface-to-air missile is the shoulder-mounted Stinger, which costs about $120,000 per missile.

The Ukrainian effort to lower air defense costs comes as a response to Russia's extensive Shahed attack drone fleets, which are numerous and cheaper to produce than typical missiles. Ukrainian officials have estimated that the Russian Geran-2, for example, costs $70,000 each, while jet-powered drones like the Geran-3 cost at least $100,000.

Kyiv uses a layered network of defense systems, including machine gun crews, interceptor quadcopters, and electronic warfare, to fight against these drones, which Russia can launch hundreds of at a time.

But Moscow has increasingly used jet-powered Gerans, which fly too fast for regular interceptor drones and human gun crews to keep up with. A new AI-powered terrain mapping system found on some Gerans has also raised concerns that Russia will soon be able to bypass Ukrainian jamming.

Ukraine's alternative has been air-defense missiles, such as the air-launched AIM-9 Sidewinder, which can cost about half a million dollars per shot.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this month that his country was working on a "small missile program" as a counter to jet-powered Gerans.

"There are several types. We will clearly see the result this month. At the end, in the second half of this month," he told reporters at a press conference.

In September, Hrytseniuk told Business Insider's Jake Epstein that several Ukrainian companies were also integrating artificial intelligence into strike missile systems and were seeing "first successes."