Tag: Operation Epic Fury

#Commentary – How Iran’s Missiles Exposed the Achilles’ Heel of American Power

#Commentary – How Iran’s Missiles Exposed the Achilles’ Heel of American Power

By Ayeza Areej

On 28 February 2026, Iran launched Operation True Promise-4, a wave of ballistic missiles and drones into Israeli airspace. The strikes were launched in response to US and Israeli attacks on Iranian territory and saturated some of the world’s most heavily defended airspace, making successful interception increasingly difficult for their adversaries.

Iran entered the war with the most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, including the solid-fuel Fateh family, the hypersonic-adjacent Fattah-1 and older Shahab-3 variants. It launched more than one hundred heavy missiles in each wave; analysts called it ‘volumetric saturation’ – overwhelming the target with more missiles than any interceptor network could handle. Israel’s Iron Dome, David’s Sling and long-range Arrow defence systems constitute one of the most multi-layered air-defence networks ever deployed. However, by the end of the conflict, Israel had reportedly used approximately 81 per cent of its Arrow interception units. This was not due to a failure of the system, but because no defensive architecture could withstand such saturation for an extended period.

It highlights two important concepts regarding military capacity: first, magazine depth, the number of missiles and interceptors a state can maintain in the fight; and second, magazine breadth, its ability to use a diverse mix of capabilities against different threats at varying costs. Iran’s mix of new and old missiles gave it breadth, and its repeated missile salvos tested the depth of Western interceptor stocks.

Iran’s missile strategy exemplifies both dimensions. Iran’s more recent solid-fuel rockets, such as the Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan, were intentionally integrated with older, low-cost liquid-fuel missiles. This was not redundancy; it was design and strategy. The newer missiles do not technically qualify as hypersonic glide vehicles, but their manoeuvrable re-entry vehicles can jink at speeds over Mach 5 during the terminal phase, making them difficult to intercept with systems like THAAD and Arrow. Legacy missiles, meanwhile, tend to serve as expendable decoys, compelling the defender to use high-cost interceptors against low-cost projectiles. Early March strikes against Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion airports, followed by salvoes over northern and central Israel, have been assessed by open-source intelligence to be fired from cluster-type payloads on systems like Khorramshahr-4. Reportedly, these systems can disperse about 80 submunitions over a broad area, a tactic that can maximise damage under strained interception capacity.

Even US air power was not completely out of reach. For instance, a US F-35 jet conducted an emergency landing after being hit by Iranian fire during a combat mission. Although Iran did not prevail militarily, it showed that a state that has faced decades of sanctions and lacks a sophisticated air force could still impose significant attritional pressure on a technologically superior coalition through saturation attacks and cost-imposition asymmetry.

A US Air Force F-35 Lightning II aircraft takes off during Operation Epic Fury, 30 March 30 2026. (Source: Wikimedia)

The clearest evidence lies in Washington’s own ledgers. During Operation Epic Fury, the United States launched over a thousand Tomahawk-class cruise missiles and up to two thousand advanced interceptors. Costing approximately USD 15.5 million per interceptor, THAAD was used at a rate of somewhere between 190 and nearly 290 units, accounting for more than half of the system’s pre-war national inventory. Before the war, there were reportedly just 3,000 to 4,500 missiles in reserve, suggesting that a substantial portion of America’s stockpile may have been used in a single war against a non-peer adversary.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted that Iran had manufactured more than a hundred missiles per month, while the US has been manufacturing no more than a handful of interceptors in the same period. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies now estimates that it would take until late 2029 to restore THAAD inventories alone. In fact, the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2027 requests 785 more Tomahawks, an admission that the war was not a temporary inconvenience but a structural vulnerability. That vulnerability does not stay contained and the implications extend beyond the Middle East.

These depletions have also led the Pentagon to rethink its Taiwan contingency plan, as diminished stockpiles may not be enough to maintain deterrence in both theatres. Throughout this period, China has also been accelerating its missile arsenal and area-denial systems while keeping an eye on the numbers. Consequently, a war in the Middle East may have opened a new window of vulnerability in the Taiwan Strait where the US faces a more capable adversary.

Western military powers have treated technological superiority as a substitute for numerical strength, assuming future wars would be quick and precise. Iran’s asymmetric strategy has taken advantage of this illusion by making the war unsustainably expensive rather than defeating Israeli or American air power. The repeated interception of USD 50,000 drones with USD 2 billion interceptors represent a disproportionate response, as the employment of expensive platforms against a low-cost threat does not constitute a strategic success. Although the US-Israel war against Iran offered a glimpse of this reality, a war over Taiwan, against a substantially larger adversary, would strain the Western magazine depth within just days.

This experience highlights the problem of magazine depth and magazine breadth. Relying on a handful of expensive, high-end interceptors is dangerous, as sustenance and adaptability are becoming crucial in the modern era.

Future deterrence is likely to depend on a combination of magazine depth and breadth. Consequently, advanced interceptors and lower-cost kinetic systems, AI-based battle management, electronic warfare, directed-energy weapons, and other layered defences that can withstand saturation attacks will define the future of warfare. For the U.S., emergency procurement of interceptors and missiles is already underway with both RTX and Lockheed Martin, but this is unlikely to provide a viable solution because of long production lead times and industrial constraints. For instance, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile could take approximately 36 months for its first delivery; Patriot and THAAD could take about three years of production lead time, and the Tomahawk cruise missiles are expected to be delivered in March 2030. Thus, rebuilding stockpiles would take a long time, requiring flexible defence-industrial capacity. Key requirements include the cost-exchange ratio of new-generation defence technologies, left-of-launch networks that neutralise missiles before they hit the launch pad, and allied industrial ecosystems that can rapidly replenish stockpiles during war.

In an era of contested aerospace dominance, the most advanced weapons alone do not guarantee air superiority and strategic success. Rather, outcomes are increasingly shaped by the depth of available stockpiles, the breadth of defensive options, and the industrial capacity to regenerate combat power during conflict.

Ayeza Areej is a researcher at the Centre for Aerospace & Security Studies. A Gold Medalist in Strategic Studies from the National Defence University, her expertise spans military strategy, air and missile power, defence modernisation, emerging technologies, nuclear security, and the Revolution in Military Affairs. She has previously been affiliated with the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, and The Truth International, and has contributed to initiatives led by the ICRC and WWF.

Header image: A Kheibar Shekan missile at the Sacred Defence Week parade in Tehran in 2022. The Kheibar Shekan is an Iranian solid-fuel medium-range ballistic missile operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force. (Source: Wikimedia)

#Commentary – The Shahed Lesson: When Great Powers Emulate the Underdog

#Commentary – The Shahed Lesson: When Great Powers Emulate the Underdog

By Őmer Őzkan

“These drones are originally an Iranian design. We took them back to America, made them better, and fired them right back at Iran,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, referring to the one-way attack drones used for the first time during Operation Epic Fury under Task Force Scorpion Strike. The remark highlights an often-overlooked reality of military innovation: even the world’s most technologically advanced militaries closely observe the battlefield achievements of their adversaries. In this case, the United States has not only remained a pioneer of advanced military technologies but has also demonstrated its willingness to learn from opponents far less technologically advanced and to incorporate those lessons into its own practice.

The military technology of the Roman legions changed little during the six centuries between the conquest of Greece and the fall of Rome. This relative stability began to erode with the transformations brought about by the Industrial Revolution and was later accelerated by digitalisation and rapid technological innovation. As technological change has intensified, states have become increasingly anxious about not falling behind developments that could put them at a disadvantage relative to their adversaries. Yet adopting new technologies can also be risky. To reduce these risks, states closely observe ongoing conflicts and adopt models that appear effective.

However, recent conflicts have shown that emulation does not only occur from weaker states to stronger ones. On the contrary, the rising costs of complex military systems such as fighter jets, missiles, and rocket systems have prompted many major actors to seek alternatives.

Diffusion of One-Way-Attack Drones:

Over the past decade, drones have emerged as one such option in multiple conflicts. Despite their limited capabilities compared to manned aircraft, their relatively low cost, unmanned status, and smaller radar signature have made them attractive tools, demonstrating notable success in conflicts such as Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Syria. Yet the opening phases of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War quickly revealed the limits of large drones, which proved vulnerable to well-established air defence systems. Moreover, as the war dragged on, even their production costs and manufacturing pace came under scrutiny amid a prolonged, high-intensity conflict.

Faced with constant Russian missile barrages, Ukraine was the first to take the initiative by responding with smaller and cheaper drones. Despite attracting global attention in the early days of the war, when its Bayraktar TB2s struck advancing Russian columns, it soon lost a substantial portion of its larger drones to Russian air defence systems. Yet, Kyiv adapted quickly. By arming commercial drones and rapidly expanding domestic production, Ukraine turned smaller, mostly first-person-view drones into a critical component of its defence. The effectiveness of these systems was not only reflected in widely circulated Ukrainian social media footage showing the destruction of Russian troops and military equipment. It was also confirmed by Russia’s adoption of similar tactics, which Chavez and Swed describe as the ‘emulation of the underdog.’

After seeing the effectiveness of Ukrainian one-way attack drones, Moscow not only began developing its own variants but also sought alternatives that could be employed effectively at scale. Accordingly, Iran’s Shahed drones were procured and modified into Russia’s own variant, known as the Geran. While Russia’s procurement of the Geran can partly be explained by its limited production capabilities and the rising costs associated with the unexpectedly prolonged war, the decision to introduce these systems was also closely connected to Moscow’s first-hand experience of the damage inflicted by Ukrainian attacks.

A Shahed-136 on display at the 2023 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force achievements Exhibition in Kermanshah in 2023. (Source: Wikimedia)

Emulating the Underdog

Today, a similar pattern is emerging in the Middle East. In response to the strategic and complex airstrikes conducted by Israeli and U.S. air forces since early 2024, Iran has relied on mass missile and drone attacks. As part of these largely indiscriminate strikes, Tehran’s strategy has not been to match these operations by targeting equivalent strategic objectives, but rather to overwhelm the air defence inventories of Israel and the United States and inflict enough damage to generate political pressure on their administrations.

Accordingly, before the operation, the United States deployed additional assets to the region to counter this threat, implicitly acknowledging the operational usefulness of such drones. However, this dynamic deepened when Washington announced that it had reverse-engineered these one-way attack drones and operationalised them during Operation Epic Fury. Finally, on the fifth day of the campaign, President Trump, referring to Ukraine’s experience against Shahed systems and the damage they have inflicted in this conflict, stated that the United States would “take any assistance from any country,” illustrating once more how even a more capable military power may benefit from the battlefield experience of states that have already confronted such threats.

The emulation and adaptation of the Iranian Shahed drones is neither the first nor the last time that a state has adopted a successful model developed elsewhere. However, it is relatively rare to see a superior power emulate the practices of a weaker actor. In the end, even great powers such as the United States remain rational actors seeking the most effective outcome. The ability of such a capable air force to adapt to emerging threats demonstrates the U.S. military leadership’s responsiveness and its close attention to evolving patterns of warfare. More importantly, it reminds us that in the never-ending technological competition for aerial dominance, the best solution is not always the most complex one. Sometimes the simplest answer proves the most effective.

Ömer Ergün Özkan is a PhD candidate in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati. His research examines military effectiveness, the impact of emerging technologies on defence procurement, and the strategic use of unmanned systems in modern warfare. He is also a Research Fellow at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri. He can be followed on X as @ErgnZkan.

Header image: The remains of a Russian Geran-2(Shahed) drone, found in the Vinnytsia region of Ukraine in March 2024. (Source: Wikimedia)