It was barely a month ago that Iran attacked Israel with 170 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles. This nighttime barrage was remarkable not only for its scope but also for the fact that it represented the first direct Iranian attack on Israel from the Islamic republic’s own territory. Even more impressive, though, was the allied response: No Iranian weapons hit their targets in Israel, many having been shot down before even reaching Israeli airspace. This saved lives, set the stage for de-escalation between Israel and Iran — and illuminated new realities about 21st-century air defense. The United States would be wise to incorporate the lessons into its own military planning.
The defense of Israel was a truly multinational and joint operation, mounted by several countries from air, land and sea. Pilots from Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Jordan worked together to down scores of Iranian drones and missiles. Two U.S. Navy destroyers intercepted unmanned aerial vehicles and at least six ballistic missiles. Ground-based defense systems, including the Patriot and the Israeli systems Arrow, David’s Sling and Iron Dome — all developed jointly with the United States — intercepted nearly all the rest, Israeli and U.S. officials say.
To be sure, there was an element of good fortune: Iran’s attack was not the worst-case scenario, which would have been an outright surprise attack. For days ahead of the attack, Iran had been promising retaliation for a deadly Israeli strike on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters in Syria. This gave Israel and governments aligned with it time to move ships, launchers and aircraft into position. The Iranians did not deploy their most sophisticated drones and missiles, and many failed in flight or never launched at all.
Still, it illustrated the kind of attack Russia could launch against NATO allies (as it has done against Ukraine since 2022) or China could fire against U.S. bases in the Pacific, such as Guam, if it attacks Taiwan. Given those threats, it’s unacceptable that the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy have yet to spend as heavily on air defense as they have on offensive armor, aircraft and warships. Instead, the Pentagon’s air defense plans chiefly call for expensive systems to defeat cutting-edge, “exquisite” threats such as hypersonic missiles and stealthy aircraft — rather than the more prosaic, but immediate, danger that cheap, easy-to-produce attack drones pose.
The good news is that relatively slow-moving drones and cruise missiles can be shot down with existing air defenses, while the technology needed to intercept fast moving ballistic missiles is much trickier and not yet fully developed. Here, the U.S. services could learn from Ukraine, which, in part because it is short of funds, has improvised an air defense network. It does rely on high-tech U.S.-supplied Patriot batteries but also on relatively simple sensors that can detect the sound and direction of incoming Russian drones and relay that information to inexpensive jammers and machine gun posts around the country.
Cost-efficiency isn’t the only concern in air defense, but it is a growing one. In the Red Sea, the Navy has spent months protecting international shipping (and its own sailors) from nonstop drone attacks by Houthi rebels. The munitions involved cost nearly $1 billion just since October, as Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro recently told a Senate panel. In fact, the Navy’s chief anti-drone weapon, the SM-2 missile, costs at least 10 times more than the drones it intercepts. And the Navy often launches two SM-2s to kill one incoming drone.
The Defense Department is trying to improve. The Army has set up a two-week training “school” at Fort Sill, where officers put soldiers, sailors and Marines deployed to overseas bases and ships through basics of air defense. One drill involves arraying soldiers on a firing range and then unleashing swarms of drones on their positions. Troops from U.S. international security partners have visited to share their knowledge and learn from our forces. It’s the kind of training that should be replicated elsewhere in the military.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks was smart to launch the Replicator program last year, dedicating $500 million to develop and manufacture cheap offensive drones for the battlefield. This week, the Pentagon announced its first Replicator order: Switchblade, a loitering munition made in California and already in use in Ukraine.
Now, the Pentagon needs a similar approach for air defense. Too many different agencies, running too many different programs, are developing sensors, networks and counter-drone systems. The Pentagon’s Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office lacks the authority and funds it needs to keep the individual services from thinking only about protecting their own forces. Ms. Hicks and her boss, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, should seize on the fresh experience of thwarting Iran’s attack to change that. It is time to identify the best systems and get them into the field for testing. The United States and its allies can’t count on a week’s warning before the next big drone attack.
