Now We Know What a Modern War Looks Like |
Iran Has Shown Us What Modern War Looks Like
By Lloyd J. Austin III
Mr. Austin served as the secretary of defense from 2021 to 2025.
Throughout my 41 years in the United States Army and my four years as the secretary of defense, I routinely held after-action reviews. Our military never stops learning and never stops asking: What worked, what didn’t, and how do we get better? That ensures America’s military remains the best and deadliest fighting force in the world.
The U.S. military must also learn from the war with Iran, which is already one of the most consequential conflicts in decades. Although the strategic outcome is still far from certain, our service members are performing with exceptional professionalism and skill. We can already start drawing some key lessons.
The Iran war is strikingly different from America’s other recent wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The Iran war looks far more like the Russia-Ukraine war, with its proliferation of inexpensive, one-way attack drones, rapid advancements in surveillance and targeting, huge use of munitions and the expansion of the battlefield well beyond traditional military targets.
During my time as the secretary of defense, our military and civilian leaders studied the lessons from Ukraine carefully — and began to prepare for this new kind of war. We bought thousands of expendable autonomous systems that U.S. forces are now employing, invested in counterdrone technology and artificial intelligence and expanded joint defense production with allies. We supplied air-defense systems to Ukraine and stress-tested the capabilities that are now defending our Gulf Arab partners’ airspace from Iranian missiles and drones. And we pushed hard to expand and accelerate our munitions production, something the Trump administration has rightly worked to continue.
These were deliberate investments to prepare for the kind of fight we are now in. In a few short weeks, the Iran war has already made clear that the United States needs to do much more.
First, we urgently need a more affordable, more comprehensive approach to countering the drone threat. Iran and its proxies have launched thousands of drones since this conflict began, targeting U.S. assets and bases and catching our Arab partners in the Gulf off guard. Despite the Pentagon’s best efforts, the cost exchange remains way out of whack: The advanced interceptors we use to fend off these drones cost vastly more than the weapons they defeat, and take far longer to produce, too.
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