Romania Follows Poland in Rolling Out Merops Drone-Hunters

Romania will soon bring the US-made Merops counter-drone system into operational service for airspace defense, becoming the second NATO member known to have procured the pickup-truck-launched interceptor after Poland, according to Defense Romania on January 20. 

Romania’s Chief of Defense Staff, General Gheorghiță Vlad, said that Bucharest had received the system, trained teams to operate it, and would integrate it “very soon” into the ongoing operation to protect Romanian airspace, Defense Romania reported. 

NATO said Poland, Romania, and US forces demonstrated Merops in Nowa Dęba, Poland, on November 18, 2025, describing it as an autonomous “drone-against-drone” system that can home on targets using radio frequency, radar guidance, or thermal signatures and can be fed data from multiple radars, including the Italian-made RPS-42.

Defense Express said Merops was covertly supplied and tested in Ukraine before Poland and Romania moved to acquire it, as NATO allies step up defenses along the alliance’s eastern flank against long-range attack drones such as Shahed-type systems used by Russian forces.   

In its truck-mounted configuration, Merops is designed as a compact “shoot-and-scoot” package that can be carried and launched from the bed of a standard pickup, allowing crews to reposition quickly and operate without a fixed site.

NATO said each interceptor costs about $14,500 and that the system has already downed more than 1,000 Russian drones in Ukraine, inflicting more than $200 million in losses using about $15 million worth of interceptors. 

Meanwhile, it was reported that NATO began deploying the US-made Merops counter-drone system to bolster eastern-flank defenses after a series of drone incursions affecting allied airspace.

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