Iran's Shahed-136 kamikaze drone — a long-range, low-altitude weapon carrying up to 50 kg of explosives and notorious for its loud lawnmower-like engine sound — has reshaped battlefield tactics in Ukraine and beyond. Ukraine, facing mass drone swarms with limited resources, developed improvised acoustic detection networks using smartphone microphones distributed along the front line, allowing AI-assisted systems to pinpoint approaching drones to within roughly one kilometre. The approach has proven so effective that the United States, after initially dismissing Ukrainian proposals, is now adopting similar methods after finding that firing expensive missiles worth hundreds of thousands of euros against drones costing less than 5,000 dollars each is financially unsustainable — a vulnerability also exposed by Shahed attacks on American bases and Gulf state facilities.