The Navy says it is working to reduce the growing costs of fighting Houthi drones launched from Yemen by placing two new experimental systems on destroyers that are slated to deploy later this summer.
"We're going to be deploying the Ford strike group with two additional missile systems on our destroyers -- the Roadrunner system and the Coyote system -- both specifically designed to go after UAVs," or unmanned aerial vehicles, Adm. Daryl Caudle, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces, told reporters last week.
Ever since the Navy repelled its first wave of drone attacks from the Houthi rebels in October 2023, there has been a steady criticism over the fact that commanders were turning to multimillion-dollar missiles to down drones that cost fractions of that amount. The phenomenon became known as the "cost-curve problem."
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"Those two systems ... are part of that attempt to get after the cost curve, give our commanding officers more options to engage the threat and ultimately be more effective in defending the high-value unit," Capt. Mark Lawrence, the commander of the destroyer squadron whose ships will employ the new systems, told reporters March 21.
The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, along with a group of destroyers, is set to deploy in the coming months, Navy officials have said.
In January, the Navy revealed that, in 15 months of fighting the Houthis, commanders fired 220 missiles, including 120 SM-2 missiles -- the service's workhorse anti-air missile that has a range of about 90 miles.
Officials didn't offer a breakdown of what the missiles were fired at.
The SM-2 missiles alone run about $2 million a piece, while some of the newer missiles that were used against Houthi missiles can run as high as nearly $28 million a piece.
While a precise cost total for munitions expended from October 2023 to January 2025 is hard to Tough calculate exactly, it's clear that the Navy has expended well over $500 million just in the cost of missiles.
The Roadrunner and Coyote systems could reduce those expenditures, but they are not new.
According to Capt. Ronald Flanders, a spokesman for the Navy's research and acquisition department, Roadrunner is itself a drone-type loitering weapon capable of targeting other drones and was first fielded by U.S. Special Operations Command.
The head of the company that makes the Roadrunner described it to reporters in 2023 as "somewhere between a reusable missile and ... a full-scale autonomous aircraft."
Meanwhile, Coyote is a similar system of launchable interceptor drones that was predominantly used by the U.S. Army to protect its bases.
"Both these systems were originally designed for use over land; however, the U.S. Navy has tested and demonstrated these systems in the maritime environment," Flanders said.
He was not able to provide a cost per interceptor or the range of either system in time for publication.
The Navy has also been experimenting with laser-based weapons that could be used to take out drones, but those efforts have been going on for years without much success in scaling experimental efforts to more than one or two ships.
In January, Caudle called the Navy’s inability to scale up the weapon "embarrassing."
In the meantime, Caudle also revealed that, thanks to a slew of analysis done on the now hundreds of engagements, the Navy is starting to revise its approach to just how many missiles it will fire to take down a drone.
"We may have had a 'shoot two, look, shoot two more'" approach, Caudle said, before noting that the Navy has "been able to reduce that because that wasn't improving our probability of kill."
However, Navy officials like Lawrence and Flanders are clear that the effort to find alternatives to missiles for anti-drone warfare isn't just about money -- it's about saving the missiles for more high-end threats.
"We're trying to find ways to make sure that we're going to have the deep missile inventories we might need for other contingencies," Lawrence said.
Rear Adm. Paul Lanzilotta, the commander of the USS Ford's strike group, also noted that Navy destroyers have also been employing their deck guns more regularly as well.
"That is a very effective weapon -- it is not just for show," he said.
Navy officials revealed in January that, in 15 months of fighting, Navy ships used 160 5-inch shells over the course of 380 separate engagements, though, like with the missiles, they didn't say what they were shot at.
At the end of the day, however, Navy leaders stress that they are not trying to discourage commanders and crews from employing the "tried and true" SM-2 missile.
In January, the commander of the service's surface forces, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, said that warship commanders are not worried about munitions cost, "nor should they be."
"They have other things to worry about, like what's for breakfast," he quipped.
"While we work on fleet initiatives to really get more efficient, I'd say we remain laser-focused on staying effective," Lawrence said.
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