BOISE, Idaho — According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO), the F-35 fighter jet fleet is the most expensive weapons system in human history at a total cost of $2 trillion.
The F-35 features the latest and greatest technology, but using a single plane worth upwards of $100 million to shoot down a cheap Iranian Shahed Drone known as a "flying moped" worth $35,000 is a strategic mismatch for the ages.
WATCH: Boise-based DZYNE Technologies is producing cost-effective weapons systems to combat cheaply made but highly effective Shahed drones made in Iran
Idaho News 6 Senior Reporter Roland Beres recently visited the Boise-based DZYNE Technologies to see how their simple and comparatively low-cost weapons systems are factoring into the overall war effort in the Middle East.
“The solution here requires a lot of innovation, not just more of the same,” said George Schwartz, Executive Vice President for CounterUAS at DZYNE Technologies in Boise.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. is currently employing Patriot Missiles that cost $4 million each to shoot down Shahed drones. And a recent study by JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, says we’re running out of Patriot Missiles fast.
Brandan Puck, who works with the Cato institute as an intelligence analyst, agrees: “One of the big tech hurdles is trying to come up with a package that’s not just radar but also [includes] IR cameras or visual cameras and also microphones that can listen for the engine of the drone and finding them and fixing them and then destroying them.”
DZYNE Technologies creates systems to track and destroy or disable drones using that technology.
“What they’re doing is developing novel, very cost-effective counter-UAS systems that are purpose-built for the environment we’re in right now,” explains Schwartz.
During the onset of the war, Iran figured out quickly that its drones can be difficult targets for expensive systems designed to track fast-moving targets.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said part of the problem is that the Iranian drones fly "low and slow".
So, Schwartz says DZYNE is finding a better way, “It’s everything from very innovative lidar systems that the team in Boise is working on to handheld and wearable detection and defeat mechanisms, to larger fixed site systems that we call the Sawtooth.”
Schwartz says DZYNE has come up with effective ways to defeat large-scale swarm attacks of drones. As a result, the U.S. military is turning to companies like DZYNE. The U.S. Government is even using Iran’s own design to create a competing low-cost attack drone called LUCAS.
And during this transition to small-scale munitions, there’s plenty of opportunity for a Boise company like DZYNE.
In fact, the company tells me its counter-UAS systems are used by the US military and international partners in more than 50 different countries.
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