How Iran Changed War: The Lessons of Tehran’s Use of Precise Mass

Foreign Affairs | Michael Horowitz

American and Israeli airstrikes targeting 13,000 Iranian positions over 37 days failed to collapse Tehran's regime or disable its strike capacity. Instead, the Islamic Republic retaliated using low-cost precision weapons and closed the Strait of Hormuz, driving up global energy prices. Pre-positioned underground missile networks and dispersed manufacturing hubs enabled Iran to absorb high-volume bombardments while exhausting Western air defences.

Defending against $35,000 Shahed-136 attack drones with $4 million Patriot interceptors rapidly depleted United States stockpiles, consuming 65 percent of available Patriot and 35 percent of THAAD inventories. Offense is currently cheaper than defense. This cost asymmetry allows weaker states to challenge conventionally superior militaries relying on exquisite, expensive platforms like Tomahawk missiles and F-35 aircraft. While American artificial intelligence systems like the Maven Smart System accelerated target processing, strategic victory requires mass production. States worldwide, including Poland with a $6.9 billion drone budget, are now adopting cheap, disposable precision weaponry.

Comment

The economic asymmetry between low-cost attritable munitions and high-end surface-to-air interceptors severely destabilises traditional layered air defence doctrine. Expenditures of MIM-104 Patriot and THAAD interceptors to negate $35,000 Shahed-136 attack drones impose an unsustainable financial and inventory drain on defending forces. When interceptor replacement costs exceed threat vector costs by two orders of magnitude, defensive exhaustion becomes a mathematical certainty rather than a tactical risk.

A comparable economic inversion occurred during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when coalition forces expended multi-million-dollar Patriot missiles against crude Iraqi Al Hussein Scud variants. That historical imbalance forced doctrine toward offensive counter-air counter-battery operations rather than perpetual point defence. The rapid depletion of SM-6 stockpiles in contemporary contested theatres similarly confirms that air defence cannot substitute for destroying salvo-generating infrastructure at the source.

Strategic Question for Discussion

Which factor will dictate near-term air defence sustainability against Shahed-136 mass attacks — the development of sub-$100,000 directed-energy interceptors or the expansion of forward counter-battery strikes against launch infrastructure?

The available evidence points toward kinetic counter-battery strikes as the primary operational remedy in the immediate future. Directed-energy and high-power microwave systems remain constrained by thermal dissipation and atmospheric attenuation, leaving them unready for high-density salvo saturation. Consequently, air defence doctrine will likely pivot back toward prioritizing offensive neutralization of launch sites over reliance on MIM-104 Patriot magazine depth.

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