Defense Tech

Iran has claimed that it has deployed a new air defence system to take down a United States MQ-9 Reaper drone near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week. Iran’s state-sponsored media said the American drone– that costs between $16 million and $30 million per unit– was brought down near Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz using a locally developed system called Arash-e-Kamangir.

If the claim is correct, the interception marked the first combat use of the defence system named after the legendary Iranian character Arash-the-Archer. It would mean Tehran has retained its military capacity to repel US and Israeli attacks despite months of war in the Middle East.

Iranian media claimed the drone was brought down over regional waters during an operation to protect the country’s airspace and maritime borders. “This operation, which was carried out using a system with hidden capabilities, is a clear and decisive message from Iran,” Iran’s Fars news agency quoted unnamed officials as saying.

However, so far, no independent source has corroborated the Iranian claim of a new interception system.

Modern air and missile defense is approaching a structural limit. The model that protected forces over the past two decades remains effective, but only within a narrower envelope than current threats demand. A new approach is required, built on fire-control-level integration, disaggregated survivable architectures, affordable magazine depth, and the integration of offensive action as the central element of defense.

I am a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and now lead international business development and strategy for Northrop Grumman in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. I previously served as chief operating officer of DEFCON AI. As a defense industry executive, I have a direct commercial interest in the integration and command-and-control issues covered here. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the Integrated Battle Command System, the U.S. Army program most closely associated with the fire-control-level integration concepts discussed, so readers should weigh that overlap most carefully in the procurement section, where my analytical argument and my employer’s commercial position are closest. The argument is not for my company’s solution specifically, but for any architecture or federated set of systems that can deliver sensor-shooter integration, disaggregation, survivability, and coalition interoperability.

The reason is simple: The threat has changed faster than the defensive architecture. Ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, one-way attack drones, and loitering munitions are no longer niche capabilities employed in small numbers. They are becoming routine instruments of coercion and war, used in combinations designed to overwhelm decision-making, exhaust magazines, expose seams between sensors and shooters, and force defenders into bad cost exchanges. Recent combat has shown that even capable defenses can perform well tactically while still revealing strategic fragility. It is time to invest in systems that are not just able to intercept threats, but do so at the scale, speed, cost, and survivability required for a sustained campaign.

The Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles the U.S. military fired during Operation Epic Fury take months to put on contract and years to produce.

Whether driven by U.S. military operations or support to partners, the challenge of quickly replenishing U.S. munitions is not new. Exquisite munitions often take an exquisite amount of time to manufacture and deliver. Defense officials, in turn, frequently want to compress that time as much as possible, seeking to restock fast and mitigate future risks.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has illuminated the challenge of accomplishing this feat. It also offers lessons for how the U.S can accelerate munitions production timelines in a crisis. Indeed, the U.S. experience attempting to surge munitions production from 2022 to 2024 did not reveal uniform failure in boosting production rates, but rather, sharp variation across weapons. Production rates of some munitions expanded meaningfully after 2022. Others stagnated. Interestingly, the emergency authorities and supplemental funding unleashed after 2022 were not responsible for this variation, as the full results of those initiatives and investments are still yet to come. Instead, decisions that pre-dated the Russo-Ukrainian War drove this variation.

The true lesson from the Ukraine crisis is that the United States cannot solely rely on improvisation to surge munitions production. Surge is indeed distinct from peacetime manufacturing or the mobilization of commercial entities to support wartime production demands. The Department of Defense should treat surging production as a core competency to be developed and rehearsed well in advance of a crisis.