CentCom Shows Apache Helicopters Destroying Drone With Air-to-Air Hellfire Attack

By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior

US Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters are refining their ability to detect and destroy enemy aerial drones  while forward deployed to the Middle East, a place where the drone threat has exploded in recent months. Apaches have a little known but proven capability to act in an air defense role against drones. This includes using their Hellfire missiles, which are traditionally air-to-ground weapons, to take them down.

A recent video published on X by US Central Command shows a US Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter destroying a target drone during “Red Sands” training in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

It makes sense that CENTCOM would be refining an ability to detect, target and destroy drone targets from the air with Apaches, as such a possibility brings clear tactical advantages. In a simple sense, a target must be seen in order to be destroyed and an Apache in the air is positioned with an improved target envelope with which to identify otherwise difficult to detect beyond-line-of-sight targets. 

The CentCom video shows the Apache attacking drones was indeed an AH-64 Longbow variant, a radar which has received several software upgrades from Lockheed designed to better enable single-track targeting, longer detection range and 360-degree surveillance. Not only does the AH-64 Longbow radar operate with an increasingly sensitive and long-range detection capability, but Apache sensors are increasingly able to “network” with both ground control targeting systems and aerial nodes such as other helicopters and drones in position to “see” and “track” an attacking drone from beyond the horizon. An ability for Apache attack helicopters to destroy drones from the air is likely increasingly possible due to newer methods of multi-domain target data sharing. Perhaps an enemy drone can be seen by a ground command and control station, satellite, fighter jet or nearby drone, all technologies in position to transmit target specifics to an Apache.

Using Apaches in this secondary role could prove capacity is certainly lesser known, yet it is something likely to prove extremely impactful in the event of a wider conflict war in the Middle East given the ubiquitous proliferation of weaponized drones in the region.  As is often the case with newer uses of advanced technology, forces acquiring new attack drone technologies implement adjusted Concepts of Operation. 

Certainly a modern warfare environment, such as that in the Middle East, continues to indicate a growing and increasingly serious drone threat. This has become the case in large measure because commercial drone technologies have not only become widespread and easily available but also more increasingly weaponized.  These technical and tactical developments have been on display in Ukraine as well, where surveillance and kamikaze “strike” drones continue to heavily impact warfare developments.