The 30,000-pound GBU-57 bombs, also known as MOPs, used in this assault were designed to attack deep underground targets in locations that are hundreds of feet below ground level. 

Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefed reporters at the Pentagon Thursday regarding the military’s planning and execution of the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, which marked the first-ever operational employment of the MOP weapon.

Early testing of the MOP began roughly two decades ago under a technology demonstration effort led by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency before being transitioned to the Air Force. Super computers were used for modeling and simulation during the development of the weapon, Caine noted during Thursday’s briefing. The chairman said he met yesterday with two DTRA officers who “spent their life’s work” enabling and demonstrating the complex bombs.

The U.S. used these so-called bunker-buster bombs on two nuclear facilities — in Fordow and Natanz — last weekend. Caine noted that the U.S. targeted ventilation shafts at Iran’s nuclear facility in Fordow.

The MOP is “comprised of steel, explosive and a fuze programmed bespokely [for] each weapon to achieve a particular effect inside the target. Each weapon had a unique desired impact, angle, arrival, final heading and a fuze setting. The fuze is effectively what tells the bomb when to function. A longer delay in a fuze, the deeper the weapon will penetrate and drive into the target,” he explained.

The U.S. military decided to strike two of the ventilation shafts at Fordow as the primary points of entry into the underground facility. In the days preceding the attack, the Iranians attempted to cover the shafts with concrete to try to thwart an attack, according to Caine.

“I won’t share the specific dimensions of the concrete cap. But you should know that we know what the dimensions of those concrete caps were. The planners had to account for this. They accounted for everything. The cap was forcibly removed by the first weapon and the main shaft was uncovered. Weapons two, three, four  [and] five were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1000 feet per second and explode in the mission space,” he said. “There were six on each side. Weapons number six was designed as a flex weapon to allow us to cover if one of the preceding jets or one of the preceding weapons did not work.”

Two additional MOPs were used on Natanz. A total of 14 were dropped during Midnight Hammer.

During a previous briefing on Sunday, Caine said that early battle damage assessments suggested that the “massive ordnance penetrator” bombs dropped by U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers severely damaged Iran’s nuclear arsenal.

​​On Thursday, he said all of the MOPs used against Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go. 

“A bomb has three effects that causes damage: blast, fragmentation and overpressure. In this case, the primary kill mechanism in the mission space was a mix of overpressure and blast ripping through the open tunnels and destroying critical hardware. The majority of the damage we assess, based on our extensive modeling, was a blast layer combined with the impulse extending from the shock,” he told reporters.

Hegseth criticized recent reporting about an intelligence assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency in the wake of the attacks that suggested the airstrikes might not have damaged Iran’s nuclear program as much as senior Trump administration officials have claimed. Hegseth told reporters that there was “low confidence in this particular report.” 

Caine said the intelligence community is in charge of the battle damage assessments.

“But here’s what we know following the attacks and the strikes on Fordow. First, that the weapons were built, tested and loaded properly. Two, the weapons were released on speed and on parameters. Three, the weapons all guided to their intended targets and to their intended aim points. Four, the weapons function as designed, meaning they exploded. We know this through other means, intelligence means that we have,” Caine said. “We were visibly able to see them. And we know that the trailing jets saw the first weapons function, and the pilot stated, quote, ‘this was the brightest explosion that I’ve ever seen. It literally looked like daylight’” even though the attacks occurred in darkness.

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The planned engagement approaches as the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, the U.S. and Israel have been bombing Iran, and China worries the West with its ongoing military buildup.

Mihkelson shed light on his team’s plan for the upcoming trip during a briefing with DefenseScoop and other participants in the country’s Defence Study Programme last week.

“We’re not asking for anything. We are showing through our own commitments and actions, and what is our understanding on what should be done together as allies — and why it is important our alliance and Europe remain as good allies for us when it comes to how to balance China and China’s growth,” he said.

Mihkelson has served in the Riigikogu (the official name for the Parliament of Estonia) for more than two decades. Prior to that, he worked in multiple capacities as a journalist, including as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow. 

At last week’s briefing, he provided an overview of his nation’s current political and industrial landscape, particularly in the context of national security. 

Estonia is known globally for its efficient operation of digital government services. Mihkelson said this legacy is in many ways linked to the nation’s history of being occupied by the Soviet Union for 50 years, before gaining independence in the early 1990s. Now, according to the MP, Estonia has the highest number of technology startup “unicorns,” with a valuation of $1 billion or more, per capita in the world. 

Regarding his upcoming trip to Washington, which will mark his fifth in this capacity, Mihkelson said his team aims to meet with a range of U.S. government leaders — including members of the new Trump administration, lawmakers and officials serving at the State and Defense Departments.

“In the Pentagon, it’s critically important — especially for our Defence Ministry right now — to understand, kind of, what is [senior leaders’] way of thinking? What is [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy] Elbridge Colby thinking currently about the force posture in Europe or in Asia? And when I asked Americans in the south of Estonia, ‘What if somebody could ask you is it worth it to be here? Can you train enough? Is it really, like, important for you to be here as a soldier?’ The answer was ‘Absolutely, yeah,’” he told DefenseScoop. “This is why we have to be constantly in communication with Washington as well, to make sure that they at least get some sort of feedback directly from us, about what is important for us as a really committed ally.”

Officials in his delegation are also looking to meet with “think tankers” from the Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, and other organizations that prioritize shared research interests with Estonians.

Noting that his team previously had “quite a difficulty” meeting with the National Security Council and other White House elements of the former Biden administration, Mihkelson said he’s keen to engage with “smart people who understand the strategic reality in its complexity” now serving under President Donald Trump. 

Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah — who recently met with the chairman in Estonia — are among the lawmakers he’s looking to connect with again while in Washington.

Regarding topics on the docket for discussion with his American counterparts, Mihkelson pointed to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and what he referred to as expanding efforts by Russia and China to divide the U.S. and its allies. 

“[China is] strongly united against, first and foremost, the United States,” he said, adding that Beijing seeks to undermine the U.S. internally and globally “as a leader of the free world.”

This preview of the trip was held shortly before Trump ordered the bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran.

But on the conflict that continues to evolve in the Middle East, Mihkelson said last week that he was “more than sure that the status quo is broken” after Israeli airstrikes destroyed what he called “quite significant amounts” of Iranian military assets.

“This might end up with very dramatic change, not only in the Middle East, but that will affect all of us,” he noted.

Beyond “close allies in America” and around Europe, Mihkelson and other members of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee are also set for trips to meet with some of their security partners in the Pacific region, including New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the Philippines.  

“It’s just to really understand better what’s happening in that part of the world, which is very much directly connected to our security when it comes to progression in Taiwan, of course. And it’s also to explain, how do we see what should be done together as partners and with our allies to make sure that Russia and China will not succeed in destroying the world,” Mihkelson told DefenseScoop.

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“The strike package was supported by U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command, U.S. Space Force and U.S. European command,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in a briefing at the Pentagon Sunday morning, later thanking the cyber operators, among others, who made the mission possible.

However, no further details about Cybercom’s efforts were disclosed. The command referred DefenseScoop to the Pentagon for comment, where a spokesperson said they had nothing further to provide at this time beyond the transcript from Sunday’s press conference.

Although details about Cybercom’s assistance for Operation Midnight Hammer, the code name for the strikes, remain murky, experts — most of whom spoke to DefenseScoop on condition of anonymity — outlined a number of possibilities for how the organization may have contributed to the effort.

Outside experts noted that there probably aren’t any U.S. military ops nowadays, regardless of how rudimentary, where a cyber component isn’t involved.

“We really don’t do military operations without cyber support anymore,” Gary Brown, Cybercom’s first senior legal counsel and now a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, told DefenseScoop. “There is a cyber component for everything we do, even if it seems really unsophisticated, even if the cyber component is just on the intelligence collection side. It’s always there.”

Moreover, others pointed out that with such a high-profile operation, many Defense Department components will want involvement in order to prove their value.

A former military cyber official noted that a sophisticated operation like Midnight Hammer points to the maturation of Cybercom, which was created just 15 years ago and now is “is a fully integrated mechanism,” supporting air superiority and global transportation.

While details regarding Cybercom’s involvement in the strike were limited, experts provided a few examples for how the command could have supported such an attack. These sources noted that they had no inside knowledge of the recent operation and were largely speaking in hypothetical terms to offer vignettes for how digital forces would likely be involved in that type of mission.

The operation involved seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers that dropped 14 “massive ordnance penetrators” — 30,000-pound so-called bunker-busting bombs — as well as Tomahawk missiles launched from a submarine and 125 aircraft that included refuelers and fighter jets, some of which were used as decoys to draw Iranian air defenses away from the B-2s. The strikes targeted the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan.

Sources noted that this would probably be a broad effort from Cybercom across several of its elements spanning the defensive side, offensive side — through teams that support combatant commands — and possibly its elite Cyber National Mission Force that protects the nation from nation-state cyber activity.

The former official said one of the most likely ways Cybercom would have aided the operation is through something akin to a cyber escort package. With air assets coming from all over the world and various commands — such as Transportation Command, European Command, Central Command and the Air Force’s Global Strike Command — it is important to ensure those aircraft and enabling functions execute missions smoothly.

That includes backups and failsafes as well as ensuring the Department of Defense’s Information Network is up and running to enable communication. Defensive cyber protection teams would likely ensure infrastructure was up and running and protected from any adversary intrusions or disruptions. That could include teams supporting several combatant commands as well as those protecting the DOD Information Network and Transportation Command, headed by the DOD Cyber Defense Command.

One of the classic examples always cited throughout Cybecom’s history as a key capability for enabling military operations is the monitoring and disabling of enemy integrated air defense systems to allow friendly aircraft to penetrate and strike. If access is gained into those systems, cyber operators could turn them off or make them malfunction, preventing the enemy from shooting down friendly aircraft looking to engage targets.

Experts that spoke to DefenseScoop noted they had no direct knowledge if this was part of the strike package or capability over the weekend, but cited it as a potential example for how Cybercom could support a kinetic strike operation.

B-2 bombers rely on stealth and thus don’t have many defensives. Given that and the fact they’re not very maneuverable under fire, monitoring and possibly disabling an adversary’s IADS would be desirable to minimize the risk of the aircraft being shot down.

Others noted that any support Cybercom can offer often requires access ahead of time, a key caveat that is often overlooked. Unlike in Hollywood, cyberspace operations aren’t as easy as just pushing a button on a keyboard. Forces must be forward and present to gain the necessary access for intelligence collection to map and understand systems, and eventually affect systems if the go-ahead is given. Moreover, that access can be eliminated if forces are discovered by the target or if a patch is implemented.

Thus, cyber forces require constant persistence in order to gain and maintain those accesses, even during times outside of conflict. In 2018, Congress paved the way to enable the command to conduct this activity, referred to as intelligence preparation of the battlefield, without tipping the covert action statute that requires presidential authority to do so, clarifying cyber is a traditional military activity.

Given this access is difficult to gain and maintain, each operation requires an important calculus on whether to act on those implants and create effects because once used, that access is burned.

For example, if it wasn’t needed, the U.S. might not have acted on Iranian IADS if they weren’t poised to shoot down the B-2 bombers, provided this was part of the op.

Axios reported that the U.S. government asked Israel to eliminate Iranian air defense systems to clear a path for American aircraft.

Others pointed to how cyber operators could have been standing by to cause effects elsewhere to divert Iranian attention away from the targets. This could include brownouts or disrupting communications, though, again, those effects would likely be weighed against the downsides of giving up those accesses if those actions weren’t needed.

Cyber-enabled intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance could have also been provided prior to the attack, producing targeting data, intelligence on Tehran’s likely immediate response, Iran’s force posture and ability to target U.S. forces during or right after the operation, according to sources.

Similarly, cyber forces could provide indications and warning during the attack to alert U.S. units with near real-time information on Iran’s military forces or counterattacks.

Support could also have taken the shape of offensive cyber action during the airstrikes, disabling Iranian military or civilian communications or their ability to respond, which likely would have been undertaken by combat mission teams that conduct cyber ops on behalf of combatant commands, mostly in the offensive sphere.

This activity could have disabled or disrupted enemy early warning systems or spoofed them in a way to show no activity incoming or many more assets moving in.

Sources also indicated cyber means could help with battle damage assessments after the strike, however, that would most likely fall within the purview of the NSA and its signals intelligence role, monitoring Iranian chatter and channels.

Some noted that it’s possible U.S. defense leaders were also lumping in NSA when they referred to the support of Cyber Command, both of which are co-located and share a leader despite having different missions — foreign intelligence, in the case of NSA.

In that vein, cyber forces, either from NSA or Cybercom, could’ve been monitoring for chatter among Iranian sources to see if they bit on the diversion the U.S. sought at the outset of the strikes against the nuclear facilities.

Defense officials reported that they sent some bombers initially west toward Guam as a ruse to distract from a potential strike in Iran, which was ultimately carried out by B-2s that flew east from the United States across the Atlantic to reach their targets.

There is also a defensive role Cybercom could be playing after the attack. Many experts are bracing for potential blowback in the digital domain and Iranian retaliation. While Tehran’s military has faced setbacks from Israeli attacks in recent days, it does pose a threat in cyberspace, which levels the playing field some as opposed to matching traditional forms of military might against the U.S. and Israel after having been significantly weakened.

Cybercom could be posturing and bolstering its capabilities to defend against threatening attempts against networks originating from Iran. This could take the form of a preemptive digital action against Iranian cyber capabilities to limit their capacity to conduct offensive retaliatory action. Forces standing by to support that role could be either combat mission teams focused on the Middle East region or Cyber National Mission Force teams assigned to specific Iranian threat actors poised to target the U.S. homeland in cyberspace.

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The event marked the first-ever operational employment of the weapon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed Sunday during a press briefing at the Pentagon.

The 30,000-pound GBU-57 bomb, also known as the MOP, is designed to be capable of attacking underground targets. It can reportedly hit locations hundreds of feet below ground level.

“MOP is a large, GPS-guided, penetrating weapon with the ability to attack deeply-buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels. The warhead case is made from a special high‑performance steel alloy and its design allows for a large explosive payload while maintaining the integrity of the penetrator case during impact,” according to an Air Force description of the system.

Due to the bomb’s size and design, it can only be carried by the B-2 bomber. Each B-2 can carry two GBU-57s.

Early testing of the MOP began about 20 years ago under a technology demonstration effort led by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency before the technology was transitioned to an Air Force “quick reaction capability program,” according to a service fact sheet. Boeing was contracted in 2009 for MOP-aircraft integration efforts. In 2017, the MOP transitioned to an Air Force program of record, according to a report by the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation.

Notably, in fiscal 2024, the Air Force conducted two full-scale tests to “verify fixes to a B-2 integration issue,” according to a DOT&E annual report.

The Air Force has been pursuing a MOP modification program to integrate a “smart fuze” capability into the weapon. The so-called Large Penetrator Smart Fuze is intended to provide “increased probability of kill” against hard and deeply buried targets “by mitigating the risk of target intelligence uncertainty,” according to the DOT&E report. Defense officials on Sunday did not say whether the MOPs used in Midnight Hammer were equipped with the smart fuze capability.

Seven B-2s and a variety of other assets were involved in Midnight Hammer, which included U.S. attacks on Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan in Iran, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at Sunday’s press briefing.

Hegseth said the aim of the mission, which was ordered by President Donald Trump, was to “destroy or severely degrade” Iran’s nuclear program. Western officials were concerned that the Iranian regime could use the country’s nuclear materials and know-how to build weapons of mass destruction.

“At approximately 6:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 2:10 a.m. Iran time, the lead B-2 dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons on the first of several aim points at Fordow,” Caine said. “The remaining bombers then hit their targets as well, with a total of 14 MOPs dropped against two nuclear target areas. All three Iranian nuclear infrastructure targets were struck between 6:40 p.m. and 7:05 p.m. Eastern time … with the Tomahawk missiles [launched from a submarine] being the last to strike at Esfahan to ensure we retain the element of surprise throughout the operation. Following weapons release, the Midnight Hammer strike package exited Iranian airspace, and the package began its return home.”

Fighter jets went in ahead of the bombers to guard against enemy fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missiles. The Defense Department is unaware of any shots being fired at the U.S. military aircraft on their way in or out of Iran, Caine noted.

About 75 precision guided weapons were employed during the operation, including the 14 MOPs, according to Caine.

Dozens of air refueling tankers were also involved in the mission, he noted, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, and hundreds of maintenance and operational personnel.

On Sunday evening, Trump posted on Truth Social that the B-2 pilots who took part in Midnight Hammer had safely returned to their base in Missouri. The mission from Whiteman Air Force Base to Iran and back lasted about 36 hours, with the help of aerial refueling, according to U.S. Strategic Command.

Senior U.S. officials touted the operation as a success.

“The damage to the Nuclear sites in Iran is said to be ‘monumental.’ The hits were hard and accurate. Great skill was shown by our military,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Hegseth described the mission as an “incredible and overwhelming success.”

Caine noted that a final battle damage assessment will take “some time” to complete. However, initial battle damage assessments “indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” he told reporters.

Officials in the Trump administration over the weekend said they now hope to have a negotiated settlement to the conflict. They were waiting to see how Iran would respond.

On Monday, Iran launched missile attacks at a U.S. military base in Qatar.

“I can confirm that al Udeid Air Base was attacked by short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles originating from Iran today. At this time, there are no reports of U.S. casualties. We are monitoring this situation closely and will provide more information as it becomes available,” a U.S. defense official said in a statement.

Updated on June 23, 2025, at 2 PM: This story was updated to include comment from a U.S. defense official about an Iranian missile attack on al Udeid Air Base on Monday.

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Soon after, Defense Department officials and observers pointed to the Juniper Oak exercise series hosted jointly by the Israeli Defense Forces and U.S. Central Command as a key enabler behind Israel’s defense and resilience against Iran’s latest attack.

“Juniper Oak — and for those that aren’t tracking, it’s a combined joint all-domain exercise that really works to improve our ability to work with Israel on land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace — and so, it was notable that the exercise series included U.S. and Israeli command and control and air interdiction, both of which were critical on defending Israel Saturday night,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a press briefing on April 15. 

In particular, he spotlighted an iteration of Juniper Oak that unfolded in Jan. 2023, which included roughly 6,400 U.S. troops, more than 1,100 IDF personnel, six ships, 180,000 pounds of live munitions and a live fire exercise, with more than 140 aircraft. 

Among other aims, that exercise integrated U.S. and Israeli fifth-generation fighter assets.

“It’s this kind of strategic cooperation and combined training that allows us to do what we did together on Saturday night,” Ryder told reporters after the mid-April strikes. 

Iran launched its direct assault on Israeli territory in response to a suspected Israeli strike on its embassy compound in Syria that killed top Revolutionary Guards commanders April 1. It came on the heels of intensifying clashes between Israel and Iran’s regional allies, which were largely triggered by the war in Gaza.

According to Pentagon reports, among the weapons launched from locations in Iran, Syria and Yemen, there were more than 110 medium-range ballistic missiles, more than 30 land-attack cruise missiles, and more than 150 uncrewed aerial vehicles. 

In the aftermath, it became increasingly apparent that the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan (not the IDF) together shot down the majority of the Iranian drones and missiles fired in the assault.

“We know Juniper Oak was a bilateral exercise — but what we saw over the course of the weekend also included European partners and Jordan. So in fact, it was more sophisticated than the exercise itself in terms of the complexity of forces in the fight, and the level of deconfliction, communication and interoperability required to be successful,” Jonathan Lord, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security, told DefenseScoop in a recent interview. 

“So in that sense, it’s really that Juniper Oak was certainly a harbinger, [but] this was certainly even more impressive,” Lord said. “This was a lethal attack — and uninterrupted, it would have been disastrous.” 

Before joining CNAS, Lord served as a professional staff member for the House Armed Services Committee, for which he handled the U.S. Central Command/Middle East defense policy portfolio and provided further expertise on issues related to security assistance. He also served previously as a political military analyst in the Department of Defense and the Iraq country director in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

In early 2023, Lord wrote an analysis on Juniper Oak and its overarching significance — arguing that the exercises’ size, scope, and complexity “set it apart from any that came before.”

Bilateral cyber incident response, agile combat deployment, and aerial refueling marked just some of the focus areas prioritized in the series.

“Obviously, there’s a moment of crisis right now, which is probably limiting this. But the U.S. enjoys a long security relationship with Israel and other partners and is very frequently engaging in military exercises with those partners to build those capabilities. Juniper Oak was one example of probably the largest and most complex one, but it’s certainly demonstrated that the U.S. and Israel have the capability to do this in a sophisticated way. They practiced it, and then it actually effectively achieved it in a moment of great consequence [over the weekend on April 13 and 14], which we witnessed,” Lord told DefenseScoop.

The U.S. and Israel did not publicly name a specific adversary in the exercise series last year.

“I think that’s largely for political sensitivities in the region,” Lord noted.

Still, he said the activities were meant to inform the types of operations the military partners would need to master to manage local threats, and establish command and control capabilities to enable multiple services to work together in a combined, multi-domain manner.

“So, we saw operations in the Mediterranean Sea that were combining air and naval assets. We saw land operations that were combining air and ground assets. In fact — and this is where it gets a little hinky and you won’t probably get many people to speak in much detail — but in fact, we also, in that exercise, had components there in the cyber and space domains as well. So it gets really, really sophisticated,” Lord said. 

“And you can do that with partners who themselves have worked to build sophisticated, complex professional militaries, either independently or with us. In the case of Israel and Jordan, it’s really both,” he added.

Spokespersons from the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not respond to DefenseScoop’s requests for comment regarding Juniper Oak, or any planned future exercises like it.

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“This incident is absolutely not a fluke. U.S. military personnel and infrastructure — both abroad and at home — are going to be exposed to drone attacks, and we can expect the sophistication of the technology and tactics to increase,” Caitlin Lee, director of RAND’s Acquisition and Technology Policy Program, told DefenseScoop this week.

Led by U.S. Central Command, the Defense Department’s investigation is ongoing and government officials have not yet shared a full assessment of what happened in the strike. 

But according to initial reports, a kamikaze drone flew near service members’ living quarters at a small base in Jordan called Tower 22 at the same time as a U.S. surveillance drone — and essentially confused American forces, resulting in no air defenses being deployed.

“Our teammates were killed by radical militias backed by Iran and operating inside Syria and Iraq. In the aftermath of the vile Hamas terrorist assault on Israel on October 7th, terrorist groups backed by Iran and funded by Iran have tried to create even more turmoil, including the Houthis attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters during a Pentagon press briefing on Thursday.

“This particular attack was egregious in that, you know, the attack was on the sleeping area of … our base. And again, Kata’ib Hezbollah and other elements continue to attack our troops. And again, I think, at this point we should — it’s time to take away even more capability than we’ve taken in the past,” Austin said.

In separate discussions with DefenseScoop this week, four defense experts shed light on the state of America’s sensing and air defense capabilities, and how global war on terrorism (GWOT) technologies might need to be adapted or enhanced to thwart the increasing sophistication of adversaries’ weapons and forces.

‘A threat we must respect’

For Patrick “Krown” Killingsworth, director of autonomy product at EpiSci, the “loss” associated with the Jan. 28 drone assault is heartbreaking and “has a personal poignancy.”

“As a former USAF F-15C and F-22 pilot I was a member of an air dominance community that dedicated their lives to protecting American and allied forces from aerial attack. We took an immense amount of pride in the fact that no U.S. forces had been killed by enemy air action since April 15th, 1953,” Killingsworth told DefenseScoop. 

Building on prior expertise as an Air Force fighter pilot and test pilot, Killingsworth now works to help deliver trusted autonomy solutions for the DOD. 

To him, this latest attack in Jordan demonstrates that while the U.S. must maintain advantage against high-end threats, the tactical capabilities of widely proliferated drones must also be taken very seriously at this time. 

“Unmanned aerial systems pose a threat that is a significant departure from those that we’ve historically been concerned with — but will be a characteristic of any future conflict and the U.S. must invest in the resources to prepare for the future fight,” Killingsworth said. 

“Also, I would point out that we should not yet classify the drone as ‘undetected,’ all that’s clear now is that it wasn’t successfully intercepted,” he added.

The experts who spoke to DefenseScoop generally agreed that what happened on Jan. 28 can be considered representative of the rapidly evolving technologies that are being deployed in a range of different conflict areas.

“This is not something we should categorize as a one-off attack. The capability for similar attacks in the region almost certainly exists — it’s a threat we must respect. The combat utility of these systems is undeniable, and the United States must make sure that we too take advantage of capabilities they can bring to our own forces,” Killingsworth said.

To Tarek Abdelzaher — a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois’ Grainger College of Engineering, who also leads the Internet of Battlefield Things Alliance — the UAS incident was alarming, particularly “because it shows that an adversary can learn to penetrate our defenses by exploiting our own safety systems against us.”

“In this case, as we now know, the base was expecting a friendly drone at the same time as the enemy drone attacked, which caused hesitation and delayed the reaction to the foreign threat,” he noted. “This is very unfortunate.”

A wide variety of UAS-spotting technologies are already available to the Defense Department. 

Capabilities exist that can detect the presence of drones on thermal cameras (because engines are hot), electromagnetic signatures (the fingerprint of drone electronics), or even sound, allowing the defense system to tell a lot about a UAS’ type, speed, and location, according to Abdelzaher. And, the actual detectors and interceptors are not very big — often ranging from something a single soldier can carry to larger vehicle-mounted and shipboard systems. 

“Drone detection is the easy part. The harder problem is to automatically tell with confidence whether this is a friend or a foe, when both are present simultaneously,” he said.

In 2021 — pointing to decreased tensions with Iran — the Biden administration removed several air defense systems from multiple Middle East countries.

Still, as of October 2023, the U.S. maintains “a significant air defense presence in the Middle East,” including Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems in Saudi Arabia, Patriot surface-to-air missile systems in several countries, and deployments of F-16 and other aircraft across the region, Mohammed Soliman, director of the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Technologies and Cyber Security Program, explained.

“Crucially, a vulnerability exists in this deployment: most systems are not currently calibrated to detect kamikaze drones or loitering munitions. Unlike traditional ballistic missiles, these drones fly at lower altitudes and speeds, are smaller and cheaper, and are only detectable at short range,” he said.

That means “industry will need time to develop and deploy new defense systems capable of countering these agile, low-altitude drones,” Soliman told DefenseScoop.

He and some of the other experts suggested that America’s post-9/11 war on terror’s main defense technologies are becoming more and more outdated, and even lagging years behind steady and quickly moving advancements in warfare capabilities.

“Technology advancements haven’t just pushed the boundaries of warfare; they’ve eroded the decades-long monopoly the U.S. held in defense technology, leveling the playing field in worrying ways. Drones epitomize this shift. Cheap, lightweight, targeted, and easily replaced, they pose a significant and often invisible threat. This harsh reality exposes a critical failing: the U.S. military has been, and continues to be, underprepared for the contemporary threat landscape,” Soliman said.

America’s air defense capabilities around the Middle East also include counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) systems. 

“C-RAM is a point defense solution for drone attacks, and there are a variety of others for both detection and interdiction,” Lee said.

Lee — a political scientist and longtime researcher of innovation, force planning, emerging technology and organizational culture — explained that it’s typically not difficult to detect very large drones, provided air defense systems are “turned on.”

However, it’s becoming clear that U.S. adversaries will continue to develop new tactics in the near term to evade detection. 

“For example, they might closely follow the flight path of friendly drones on approach,” Lee said, noting that air defenses at times may be turned off when friendly aircraft are expected to land, creating an opportunity for adversary aircraft to follow closely behind. 

“Small commercial-derivative drones — like the ones used in Ukraine — pose a much harder detection and interdiction challenge. Air defense radars were all originally designed to detect large, fast aircraft — not low-flying, slow and small drones that look like birds or a variety of other flying objects. And even when anti-aircraft systems detect small drones, the cost of shooting them down is much higher than the cost of the drone itself, creating a very unsustainable and unfavorable cost-exchange ratio,” Lee said. 

“The problem is only going to get harder as adversaries start to deploy drone swarms, which could potentially overwhelm air defenses,” she noted.

What is needed

America’s relationship with Iran is evolving, complex and historically tense.

“Iran seeks to operate under a cloak of plausible deniability, providing money, weapons and training to militant groups in the Middle East who share Tehran’s opposition to U.S. interests and objectives in the region. Unmanned systems are perfect weapons to ensure that plausible deniability, and Iran is a top supplier of these weapon systems,” Lee explained. 

The Iranian military backs and equips dozens of militias in the region. But at this point, it’s still unclear how much of a role Iran played in the actual execution of the Jan. 28 attack on U.S. forces.

“Iran’s interests may not always be completely aligned with these militant groups, but so far it has not been willing to turn off the spigot, either, and we can expect militant groups to continue to capitalize on this,” Lee said. 

“China and Turkey are also major drone exporters in the region. Drones are relatively low-cost and easy to operate, making them a weapon of choice for middle powers, non-state actors and individuals who seek to maximize the lethality on a budget. So we can expect to see the global market for combat-capable drones — both military grade and commercially derivative — to continue to grow,” she also noted.

As tensions in and around the Red Sea show no signs of immediately waning, Iran and its proxies are also posing significant cyber threats to U.S. interests, according to some analysts. 

“As the conflict in Gaza persists, and considering Iran’s recent attack on American forces in Jordan and the impending U.S. response, the risk of cyber attacks on U.S. networks and infrastructure — both domestically and internationally — is set to escalate sharply. Iran-based cyberattacks have already jeopardized water and wastewater facilities in several U.S. states by exploiting vulnerabilities in computer systems manufactured by Israel that operate these facilities,” Soliman said.

DefenseScoop asked experts to share suggestions regarding how the U.S. should confront these modern technological threats.

Abdelzaher argued that this incident showcases the importance of having advanced and trustworthy artificial intelligence in the battlefield that can make fast, safe and accurate decisions about threats.

“Weaponized kamikaze drones are becoming a more commonplace tool in today’s conflicts. They significantly reduce the time available for decision-making from when they are detected and before they hit their target. We already have the capability to quickly respond to such threats. The problem is that we do not want a repeat of the ‘Uber story’ when an autonomous car hit a pedestrian because it misidentified them. Therefore, a conservative approach is taken – when in doubt, don’t shoot. Better AI can remove the doubt,” he said.

Lee recommended that the U.S. work to get “left of launch” by targeting emerging drone and missile proliferation networks, like UAS makers, suppliers, and trainers, before future attacks are launched.

“The U.S. has tried to do some of this in response to the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, but that is too little too late. What is needed is a systematic, prolonged U.S.-led campaign to go after drone and missile proliferation networks before they result in attacks. The left of launch approach could involve targeted attacks on drone manufacturers or launch sites, but it could also involve non-kinetic solutions: cyber attacks, interdicting supply lines, and working with allies and partners to crack down on third party drone part suppliers,” Lee said.

In terms of America’s response, she and all the experts DefenseScoop spoke to suggested that while the Pentagon has started to invest in counter-UAS technologies, much more is needed.

“To date, many counter-drone solutions focus on modifying air defense systems to detect and intercept drones. While these are good point solutions, the cost exchange ratio is not favorable. The U.S. needs to consider rapidly fielding lower-cost, more effective solutions in the realms of electromagnetic warfare and laser weapons,” Lee noted.

In Soliman’s view, although the U.S. possesses advanced UAS technology, “its utilization and development have yet to keep pace with the threat landscape.” 

“The underinvestment in sensing and counter-UAS technologies leaves vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit. The recent conflicts in the Middle East serve as stark reminders of this strategic gap,” he said.

Killingsworth, too, stated that the Tower 22 attack spotlights a need for the American military to invest in more robust solutions that can be leveraged and adapted to counter innovations in drone technology in real-time.

“Without a doubt this attack will be studied by a large number of U.S. military tacticians. My hope is that we will understand and apply any lessons learned so that the date of January 28, 2024 is remembered for future generations of air superiority practitioners as the final time that U.S. forces were attacked by an enemy aircraft,” the former Air Force pilot told DefenseScoop. 

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Since Israel’s war against the Palestine-based militant group Hamas broke out following an Oct. 7 ambush, Pentagon officials have confirmed a series of drone and missile assaults from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen on ships in the region. Those tensions seriously intensified in the southern Red Sea on Dec. 3, as the Navy destroyer USS Carney responded to distress calls from three commercial ships that requested assistance against drones and ballistic missiles being fired from what the U.S. deems a Houthi-controlled location. 

Carney’s crew ultimately shot down three unmanned aerial vehicles that looked to be heading for the Navy vessel as it was maneuvering to help the bulk carriers. In an official statement following those events, U.S. Central Command noted that the three vessels are connected to 14 separate nations and that the U.S. has “every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran.”

Monday, Grady reiterated those assessments during a discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council.

“It very much is an expansion of perhaps the larger conflict that is in Israel and Hamas because … there’s undoubtedly an Iranian hand in this. So, this looks a little bit like horizontal escalation,” he told NBC News correspondent Courtney Kube, who moderated the discussion.

In the vice chairman’s view, the incidents on Dec. 3 mark “a first for attacks on international shipping — and that’s a big deal.” 

These events disrupted the international flow of commerce going through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, “one of the key [shipping] choke points in the world,” Grady noted, and therefore resulted in “not just a U.S. problem, [but] an international problem.”

At one point, U.S. officials responding to the distress calls on Sunday were concerned about one of the commercial ships under attack taking on water.

“They’re in a good place now,” Grady confirmed, but that’s partly because the Carney and other Navy assets were already poised nearby to respond to the associated threats around those waters, he said.

“It does suggest then, that our presence — along with our international allies and partners — is going to be really important in that key choke point. So the question now is, ‘How do we do that with our allies and partners?’ And so I think what you will see from the maritime perspective through Central Command and the Naval command that we have there in Bahrain, we will stand up what we have done in the Strait of Hormuz before — and that is the ability with our allies and partners at key points to provide some semblance of protection through that key strait,” Grady explained.

Responding to follow-up questions, he explicitly confirmed that he expects to see increased presence in the Bab-el-Mandeb strait in the near term — much like the unit of sailors and marines the U.S. recently deployed to the Strait of Hormuz to patrol and protect against what the Pentagon said was attempts this summer by the Iranian navy to seize merchant vessels.

“There are over 30 nations that are part of the combined maritime force, the coalition maritime force that operates out of the Naval Central Command, out of the Fifth Fleet. And already seven nations have stepped forward to say: ‘We’re ready to help,’” Grady said.

Other moves under consideration to counter those attacks in the Red Sea involve reflagging ships — or embarking “security teams” of U.S. Marines on commercial vessels.

“We will continue to work with our allies and partners about potential response options against the Houthis and to keep our eye on this,” Grady said.

Among other topics he spoke about during the event, the admiral also confirmed that he’s pleased with what he views as progress the department is making to reach its aims for Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2.

“I think we’re making pretty good strides there,” he said.

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These types of ops involve physically sending defensively oriented cyber protection teams from the U.S. military’s Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) to foreign countries to hunt for threats on their networks at the invitation of host nations. The CNMF was recently designated a sub-unified command in December.

Since 2018, the CNMF has deployed 44 times to 22 different nations conducting such operations on nearly 70 networks, according to Cybercom. Officials say these operations are mutually beneficial because they help bolster the security of partner nations and provide Cyber Command — and by extension, the United States — advanced notice of adversary tactics allowing the U.S. to harden systems at home against these observed threats.

The Iranian cyberattacks occurred in July and September 2022. The July attacks, in response to an Iranian government opposition group conference in Albania, shut down numerous Albanian government services. The September attacks targeted a government system used to track border crossings following Albania cutting diplomatic ties with Iran.

The U.S. government issued sanctions against Iran and sought to help Albania bolster its overall security posture.

 “We will continue to support our NATO ally Albania’s remediation efforts, and invite partners to join us alongside our NATO allies in holding Iran accountable for its destructive cyberattacks against Albania in July and September 2022,” U.S. Ambassador at Large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy Nathaniel Fick said in a statement.

The CNMF team was deployed for three months and provided technical findings to the Albanian government allowing them to bolster their networks. These insights are also critical to defending the U.S. against malicious cyber activity.

“These hunts bring us closer to adversary activity to better understand and then defend ourselves, but they also bring the U.S. closer to our partners and allies. These relationships are key to protecting our networks and critical infrastructure against shared threats,” Maj. Gen. William Hartman, commander of the CNMF, said.

“When we are invited to hunt on a partner nations’ networks, we are able to find an adversary’s insidious activity in cyberspace, and share with our partner to take action on. We can then impose costs on our adversaries by exposing their tools, tactics and procedures, and improve the cybersecurity posture of our partners and allies. When we share information, we are all more defended from those who seek to do us harm,” he added.

These types of ops are an opportunity for the U.S. to build stronger partnerships with other nations on the cyber front, a key priority for enhancing global digital security.

“The cooperation with U.S. Cyber Command was very effective and made us feel safe by assuring that we have followed all the right steps in responding to these sophisticated attacks,” Mirlinda Karçanaj, general director of the National Agency of Information Society, an Albanian government institution that coordinates information systems, said. “We hope that this cooperation will continue in the future so that we can further exchange experiences and increase our capacities to another level.”

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