A Golden Dome can't protect against a Trojan Horse

A plea to not build a Maginot Line in Space

The Triumph of Intelligence over Brute Force

In case you were living under a rock last year, you probably watched in awe the past few days as Israel once again taught a masterclass in 21st century warfare. Using a combination of strike aircraft, cyber and electronic warfare, targeted assassinations by Mossad and drone strikes conducted at scale from deep inside Iran, they have managed to largely neutralize not just the ability of Iran to threaten them with nuclear weapons, but also the regime’s ability to retaliate.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that despite years of preparing to see it coming, Israel, in a good cop/bad cop dance of diplomacy with the US, managed to achieve complete strategic surprise. Israel managed to achieve this through a combination of intelligence and special operations fusion, including the pre-positioning of precision strike assets deep inside enemy territory. As Doug Livermore of the Atlantic Council pointed out in a brilliant article he published this week: “The most striking aspect of Operation Rising Lion was Israel’s ability to achieve tactical surprise through pre-positioned assets rather than relying solely on standoff weapons or penetrating strikes.” This is a revolution in modern warfare with parallels going all the way back to the Greeks and their trojan horse.

“The most striking aspect of Operation Rising Lion was Israel’s ability to achieve tactical surprise through pre-positioned assets rather than relying solely on standoff weapons or penetrating strikes.” - Doug Livermore, Atlantic Council

The IDF and Mossad basically managed to eliminate all the middle management of the IRGC and other units, damage/neutralize the nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz, neutralize their air defenses, neutralize the Iranian air force, eliminate >1/3 of their ballistic missile launchers and now we are hearing that the Ayatollah is also in hiding and being compartmentalized from command by the remaining generals- all in 72 hours.

The Israeli drones were able to target a specific apartment in which an Iranian nuclear scientist was located

The Israelis did this not through brute force, but through a triumph of intelligence. They relied on SIGINT, HUMINT, Cyber, Electronic Warfare and other means to precisely track their targets and remove the functioning decision making architecture the regime had in place.

Penthouses occupied by IRGC Generals and other high level commanders

Prior to the start of operation Rising Lion (Am Kalavi), Mossad literally smuggled an entire salvo of FPV drones and Spike Precision Loitering Munitions deep inside Iranian territory where they used them to neutralize what remained of their Russian built air defenses and conducting precision strikes on Iranian leadership.

Translation: “In recent hours, Air Force fighter jets, under precise intelligence guidance from the Intelligence Branch, completed an extensive attack against the Iranian regime's air defense system in western Iran. As part of the attacks, dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers were destroyed.” The systems listed have an estimated effective range of 300, 85, 24 and 105 km each.

“What we are witnessing (in recent weeks’ attacks) it the triumph of intelligence over brute force”- Cedric Debernard, Canadian Intelligence Analyst

With the remaining IADS neutralized, Israeli warplanes were free to do what they do best: hunt and kill Iranian transport erector launchers (TELs) and Shahed drone launches. As the table below shows, with each subsequent day of the war, the IAF and Mossad are uncovering more and more launchers and destroying them. Subsequently each night the volume of strikes is shrinking.

Thanks to Grok for helping me summarizing the last few days strikes by Iran into Israel (I don’t have up to date numbers for the night of the 16th).

The amazing effectiveness of intelligence over brute force, of precise autonomous strike systems operating from behind enemy lines with tightly integrated intelligence should give us pause as we begin massive investments to put up our own ballistic missile defense system: the golden dome. While eliminating the threats from ballistic missiles is wonderful, we must also be vigilant about strikes from unmanned systems within our borders as well.

It does us no good to build a Golden Dome around America only for a future adversary to attack us with a Trojan Horse.

History Repeating Itself within a Fortnight

The heavy use of FPV drones to high value targets from deep inside enemy lines comes less than two weeks after the Ukrainians pulled off a similar operation they called Operation Spiderweb, which I wrote about in last week’s Substack. The parallels with the Ukrainian operation, which made heavy use of drones smuggled into Russian territory to target and destroy Russian strategic bombers are striking. Right down to self destructing the launchers when they were done using them:

The Israelis took Operation Spiderweb and put it on Steroids. In addition to the drone and loitering munition operations, the also used insider intelligence gathered by double agents that gave them precise information about the Iranian command echelon’s movements to round up their targets. The irony was of course that many of these assets were kept around by the Iranians because they thought they had actually flipped them when they hadn’t.

There are also reports that Israel may have even used false communications traffic to summon Iran’s top air force commanders to meet in a particular location which they subsequently took out: “We carried out specific activities to help us learn more about them, and then used that information to influence their behavior,” the official told the outlet. “We knew this would lead them to meet — but more importantly, we knew how to keep them there.”” The extent to which the Iranian military has been decapitated in such a short period of time is extraordinary and raises doubts about the viability of the regime.

Maximum pressure must be complimented by Maximum Support (for the Iranian people)

In March I had the privilege to attend a small audience with the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi at the Upfront summit in Los Angeles. He made the case that while maximum pressure through sanctions and military force were necessary to bring down the regime, in his opinion they weren’t sufficient. He talked about how maximum support for the Iranian people - through the form of organizing and support from abroad were necessary to help finally overthrow the regime. He also carried this message to several world leaders, including Bibi Netanyahu, which explains why Bibi always makes it a point to address the Iranian people separately from the regime.

What does this “maximum support” look like? Well Elon Musk took a positive step by turning on Starlink within Iran, enabling external communication not going through the Ayatollahs. Another form could be to encourage labor strikes and other civil disobedience that would prevent the regime from functioning. The crown prince is right to point out the role of the Iranian people in potentially bringing this war to a close. They have suffered under 46 years of oppression and they must be on board with any change towards a more pro-western posture. Hopefully some of the same forces we saw come out during the Persian Spring over fifteen years ago are still dormant and ready to rise up lest other more radical forces take charge instead.

A “Golden Dome” strategy looking only at threats from outside our borders is a 21st century Maginot Line

Preliminary estimates range widely for what the Golden Dome- intended to defend the American homeland against ICBMs, Hypersonic Vehicles and Cruise Missiles from abroad - will end up costing. The down payment listed in the FORGE act is $25B for this year, with timeframes and estimates for finishing it ranging from three years and $165B to 20 years and $542B.

Golden Dome is obviously aimed at stopping a massive Chinese or Russian launch where we presently have only the deterrence factor of mutually assured destruction to rely on. It’s an enormous investment which builds on our existing Ground Based Interceptor program which took over two decades to deploy - and presently has less than three dozen operational interceptors on the west coast with a Probability of Kill (Pk) of about 56% based on real world tests. Fortunately, Kim Jong Un or the Iranians are unlikely to launch more than a couple dozen missiles at us so it could be useful in these “mad men” scenarios.

Meanwhile, we remain largely exposed to a possible attack by drones launched from inside our borders just like we saw in the last two weeks. A small percentage of shipping containers and trucks entering our country are actually searched, we have millions of foreigners living inside our borders and the parts to execute a strike like what took place in Russia are mostly procurable off Amazon and other eCommerce sites. How much added money is allocated in the FY2025 budget for CUAS? As the table below shows, DoD requested $1.276B.

That $1.276 billion must be split amongst R&D of new systems as well as procurement of existing ones that defend our units in the field and all of our bases and critical infrastructure and sites. While this is a major step up from previous years CUAS spending, it still feels like given 300+ bases in the US alone to defend, not to mention other targets of interest (stadiums, airports, power plants, refineries, etc) and the extent of the threat, a two or three multiple on these figures is warranted, or whatever funding the industrial base can bear. At the very least, we should do some bottoms up analysis on the real cost of defending all strategically important targets against drone threats and just how many assets it would take.

In case it wasn’t obvious, the past 30 days have shown us that a strike from within our borders from coordinated drone swarms could be every bit as debilitating as a limited ICBM strike - and possibly even harder to defend against.

Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before we face a massive drone strike from within our borders — and unlike the Golden Dome, the technology to effectively counter drones is much more mature and available for procurement today. We should demand that Congress and DoD weight the threat appropriately when allocating resources. Because a Golden Dome cannot protect against a Trojan Horse.