GoKawiilPosted on by steve blank
Drones in Ukraine and in the War with Iran have made the surface of the earth a contested space. The U.S. has discovered that 1) air superiority and missile defense systems (THAAD, Patriot batteries) designed to counter tens or hundreds of aircraft and missiles is insufficient against asymmetric attacks of thousands of drones. And that 2) undefended high value fixed civilian infrastructure – oil tankers, data centers, desalination plants, oil refineries, energy nodes, factories, et al -are all at risk.
When the targets are no longer just military assets but anything valuable on the surface, the long term math no longer favors the defender. To solve this problem the U.S. is spending $10s of billions of dollars on low-cost Counter-UAS systems – detection systems, inexpensive missiles, kamikaze drones, microwave and laser weapons.
But what we’re not spending $10s of billions on is learning how to cheaply and quickly put our high-value, hard-to-replace, and time-critical assets (munitions, fuel distribution, Command and Control continuity nodes, spares), etc., out of harm’s way – sheltered, underground (or in space).
The lessons from Gaza reinforce that underground systems can also preserve forces and enable maneuver. The lessons from Ukraine are that survivability while under constant drone observation/attack requires using underground facilities to provide overhead cover (while masking RF, infrared and other signatures). And the lessons from Iran’s attacks on infrastructure in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries is that anything on the surface is going to be a target.
We need to rethink the nature of force protection as well as military and civilian infrastructure protection.
Air Defense Systems
For decades the U.S. has built air defense systems designed for shooting down aircraft and missiles. The Navy’s Aegis destroyers provide defense for carrier strike groups using surface-to-air missiles against hostile aircraft and missiles. The Army’s Patriot anti-aircraft batteries provide area protection against aircraft and missiles. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) provides missile defense from North Korea for Guam and a limited missile defense for the U.S. MDA is leading the development of Golden Dome , a missile defense system to protect the entire U.S. against ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles from China and Russia. All of these systems were designed to use expensive missiles to shoot down equally expensive aircraft and missiles. None of these systems were designed to shoot down hundreds/thousands of very low-cost drones.
Aircraft Protection
After destroying Iraqi aircraft shelters in the Gulf War with 2,000-lb bombs, the U.S. Air Force convinced itself that building aircraft and maintenance shelters was not worth the investment. Instead, their plan – the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) program – was to disperse small teams to remote austere locations (with minimal air defense systems) in time of war. Dispersal along with air superiority would substitute for building hardened shelters. Oops. It didn’t count on low-cost drones finding those dispersed aircraft. (One would have thought that Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web using 117 drones smuggled in shipping containers – which struck and destroyed Russian bombers – would have been a wakeup call.) The cost of not having hardened aircraft shelters during the 2026 Iran War came home when Iran destroyed an AWACS aircraft and KC-135 tankers sitting in the open. Meanwhile, China, Iran and North Korea have made massive investments in hardened shelters and underground facilities.
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