Earlier this month, grainy footage emerged online of a black and white screen showing a Russian Shahed-136. The drone is flying at night in western Odesa, hovering in the cross hairs of a laser sight.

A loud crash is followed by a nervous wait as an unidentified Ukrainian soldier tracks the missile’s four-second flight.

“Come on, baby, come on,” he murmurs in Ukrainian, as the missile homes in on its target. On impact, it explodes, causing the Shahed drone to wobble before nose diving to earth like a paper aeroplane. “Yes.” the drone operator screams, reeling off a string of expletives.

This was the first time Ukraine has confirmed using an American Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) missile to take out a drone.

The US-supplied system is a conversion kit that adds new fins and laser guidance to Cold-War era rockets to improve their accuracy – much like adding power steering to an old car.

Before now, APKWS missiles have only been used to take out air-to-ground targets, such as buildings or tanks. But thanks to the addition of a new American-supplied launch pad, they can now be used to take out much smaller targets with increased accuracy.

This combination therefore enables the Ukrainian army to shoot down devastating Russian Shahed drones using readily available ammunition at a fraction of the cost of previous methods.

Shaan Shaikh, a fellow with the CSIS Missile Defence Project, said: “It’s taking Cold War-era systems and bringing them forward into the modern age, allowing decreases in training time, logistical requirements and costs.”

The launcher – called a Vehicle Agnostic Modular Palletised ISR Rocket Equipment, or Vampire – is equipped with thermal and infrared sensors, a laser and a screen, allowing Ukrainian troops to guide the missile by moving a cursor on the screen. At the same time, a laser seeker onboard the APKWS missile steers it toward the laser beam aimed by the operator, enabling it to lock-on to its target.

‘Purpose-built’

“This gives you a very light, short-range version of a purpose-built laser-guided missile,” said Prof Justin Bronk, an air-warfare specialist at the Royal United Service Institute.

In the past year, the US has sent Ukraine 14 of the launchers, worth $40 million (£34 million) in total. Meanwhile, a single APKWS missile, which has a range of 6.5 miles, costs about $42,300 – $2,300 for an obsolete 2.75 inch Hydra rocket and $40,000 to convert it with APKWS.

The numbers may sound intimidating, but this is significantly cheaper than the long-range anti-aircraft missiles currently used to battle Shahed drones, such as the Stinger MANPAD, which cost up to $100,000 a shot, or the German-supplied IRIS-T missile systems, which cost about $455,000.

“It’s adapting something cheap and cheerful that doesn’t use up much more expensive purpose-built, surface-to-air missiles that are available in much smaller quantities,” said Professor Bronk.

The use of APKWS in this fashion comes after Moscow has launched record numbers of drone strikes in recent months, attacking military and civilian targets as well as power stations, to deprive Ukraine of electricity and heating.

Combined with concerns about shell shortage as Washington continues to drag its feet over providing further aid to Ukraine, Kyiv has been left in dire need of alternative methods of taking out Russian drones that don’t break the bank.

‘Cost-effectiveness’

“If you are firing an APKWS successfully to intercept a Shahed, then that’s a very large increase in cost-effectiveness, and you would be saving ammunition that is in short supply at the moment,” said Prof Bronk.

Using APKWS for this purpose enables Ukraine to preserve its surface-to-air missiles, which play a crucial role in containing the Russian air force. “One of the things that could make Ukraine lose the war is if they lose ammunition for higher end surface-to-air missiles that they use to keep the Russian air force back,” said Prof Bronk. “In that context, something like APKWS can take some of the pressure.”

Revamping APKWS to attack drones forms part of a trend of Ukraine updating existing weapons to adapt to the conflict. With missile stocks running low last year, Kyiv modified its Soviet-era air defence vehicles to fire western missiles, producing so-called “FrankenSAMs”, which have also been used to shoot down Russian drones.

More recently, Ukraine has deployed modified drones to devastating effect against Russia’s Black Sea fleet. The crude-looking sea drones cost less than £1,700 each and have been responsible for destroying Russian military hardware worth millions of pounds.

Powered by jet ski engines, a swarm of 10 seaborne drones, known as “Maguras”, last month sank Russia’s Ivanovets guided-missile corvette off the coast of occupied Crimea – in the first Ukrainian attack of its kind to completely destroy one of Moscow’s warships.

“It’s not the shiny toy that’s going to fix the problems,” said Mr Shaikh, referring to some of the headline-line grabbing weapons systems the West has donated to Ukraine, such as Himars or Patriots. If we’re expecting a long-haul fight, focusing on what is sustainable is what matters.”